The welcome demise of ‘day return’ business air trips

The end of the same-day, out-and-back business air trip has been a long time coming — despite dire predictions of its side-effects. In 1973, a British Airways executive warned of the stress suffered by “businessmen [sic] who think that they can be 100% effective on a there-and-back-in-a-day trip”. “Just watch some of our customers losing control of themselves when told of a delayed departure or read complaint letters written in flight or just post-flight,” he told an FT conference. It has taken 50 years, a global pandemic, looming climate catastrophe, tightening travel budgets and previously unimaginable technological and workplace advances to curb bosses’ belief that if the flight schedule says a there-and-back-in-a-day trip can be done, it should be done, if not by them then by their minions. This week Suzanne Neufang, head of industry trade body the Global Business Travel Association, said the one-day flight business trip “went out the door at the beginning of Covid and hasn’t really come back”. Good riddance. In 1988, British Airways introduced a supersonic “day return” ticket to New York. Its “back in a day” discounted fare catered to a small minority of Concorde passengers who wanted to fly out from London in the morning, wheeler-deal in a JFK airport conference room for a few hours, and fly back that afternoon. At the time, the cost of the ticket was said to compare favourably with staging a video conference. Concorde is long gone, but the ubiquity and cheapness of Zoom and competing platforms is one of the significant changes that is condemning the out-and-back trip. Another is an effort by corporate purse-string holders to cling on to the savings they reaped when coronavirus grounded most workers. Travellers are now encouraged to group multiple encounters into fewer, longer trips: three- to five-night stays account for 40% of business travel, according to a GBTA survey. Story has more.<br/>