British Airways owner International Airlines Group expects another record summer amid unrelenting demand from holidaymakers and as tech executives drive a recovery in business travel. The airline company, which owns five carriers including Spain’s Iberia and Ireland’s Aer Lingus, said demand for travel “remains strong” and predicted it would fly more passengers this summer compared with last year. Passenger capacity would be up 7 per cent this year compared with 2023, IAG said. “We had a very strong summer last year . . . We expect passenger numbers probably to grow . . . as we put more aircraft across the Atlantic and into leisure destinations in Europe,” said chief financial officer Nicholas Cadbury. Lufthansa and Air France-KLM have also recently predicted another bumper summer as travellers brush off geopolitical fears and a weak economic backdrop. IAG has not issued financial guidance for the rest of the year, but analysts forecast another €3.5bn in operating profit, on par with last year’s record. Its shares were trading up about 1 per cent by early afternoon on Friday, at their highest levels in two-and-a-half years but 50 per cent below pre-pandemic levels. That is partly because corporate travel has been slow to return. But on Friday IAG said this part of its business “continued to recover” in the first quarter, after reaching 70 per cent of 2019 levels in 2023. IAG chief executive Luis Gallego said BA experienced a 25 per cent year-on-year rise in revenues from customers in the tech industry, which had been one of the weakest last year. But he said corporate travel in banking, finance and pharmaceuticals was still “lagging behind” other sectors in the quarter. The recovery in business travel had been quicker in Spain than the UK, because people returned to the office faster after the pandemic, and there was less remote working, Gallego added.<br/>
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British Airways owner IAG said on Friday it is in talks with other airlines about ceding routes in order to address EU regulators' concerns that its bid for Air Europa may reduce competition and lead to price increases. IAG, which also owns Spanish carrier Iberia, aims to secure full control of Air Europa, but the European Commission last month warned about the impact on Spanish domestic routes as well as long-haul routes. "Regarding Air Europa's acquisition, we continue to make progress with the European Commission and have already shared with them the potential airlines that would take over the routes renounced as part of the remedy package," IAG said in a statement in a call with Spanish media outlets. It added that "as shared before, we have received a lot of interest from different carriers and are working with Avianca, Binter, Iberojet, Ryanair, Volotea, and World2Fly as potential remedy takers both on long-haul and short-haul routes". IAG has until June 10 to submit remedies. In February 2023, IAG said it had agreed to pay E400m to Spanish tourism company Globalia for the 80% of Air Europa it did not already own in a bid to improve its Latin American market share, expand into Asia and allow its Madrid hub to compete with other major airports in Europe. IAG CE Luis Gallego told analysts on Friday after reporting first-quarter earnings that the group could pull the plug on its bid for Air Europa if conditions demanded by regulators prove too cumbersome, but he said that IAG wasn't yet at that point.<br/>