cmd320

The average, perhaps, however there is a luxury demographic of leisure traveler, plus your general traveler that just doesn't fly economy.

I see smaller premium cabins, though, and probably a reduction in upgrades if not having those go away all together. And of course there will still be business travel, that's not going away either.

AHC96

Totally agree. A (very) small number of business travellers were flying during the pandemic. I've been told to prepare for international business trips from December onwards.

Artpen100

Once the pandemic is over and things open up, given the ability to work from anywhere, I may be offsetting any lower business travel with additional leisure travel.

mfolf

I admit, since I've been used to working remotely for years, I used to just take an hour flight to an airline lounge on a first class upgrade seat (yay status) because that was a lot nicer of an environment than being in home or the office. Call me selfish and bougie, but I don't want to see that ability disappear because of less business demand.

Chris2013

I'm just trying to understand this but you flew to an airport just to sit in an airline lounge and do work on your computer? To each their own but it sounds like a massive inconvenience. Wouldn't it just be easier to have your desk set up at home with multiples screens, a printer, and all of your "stuff" within reach? At least pre-covid, even the best lounges seemed to be lacking sufficient desk space and room to comfortably work.

gaobest

it sounds more fun than MR. I have been taking lessons of the comforts of vacations. And restaurants to make life more fun while sheltering in a pandemic. We all have our interests :-)

Chris2013

What's MR?

And isn't going on vacations and out to restaurants the exact opposite of "sheltering in a pandemic"? I agree we all have our interests and whatever floats your boat.

mfolf

Mileage Run. I guess there was the added bonus of 1000 miles for each trip, but that wasn't the priority as much as the scenery.

It wasn't a daily thing as much as every other month, as I justified the fact that the free food/beer of the lounge membership + working on a plane with views of the California coast (going between SFO-LAX/SAN is very beautiful). Living 10 minutes away from SFO at the time vs 45 minutes to Downtown SF, combined with PreCheck and CLEAR, really upped the incentive and convenience factor to just fly. Plus, Alaska offered warm enough hospitality vs Southwest or United so it pretty much became an easy getaway that I looked forward to.

I consider myself grateful to be able to do that, and feel a little remorse for not being able to do that again, however privileged it is.

pinniped

I guess we can still do domestic vacations... Not that spending unnecessary time in airports floats my boat, but I will say this: the pandemic has caused us to visit some national and state parks this year that we wouldn't have otherwise visited.

Although we get many things horribly wrong, the country I'm currently trapped in (the USA) generally gets parks right. Many individual states do as well.

gaobest

We used to read about MR on ft for years until 2016 when mileage devaluation started the trend of less MRs :-)

I’m using lessons from restaurants and vacations in my own house... new fridge with a door dispenser after years of a OGG condo that had it. I now try to cook meals or entrees that I used to love to order. Those are my creature comforts, just like some people do MRs or fly to use airport lounges or now fly to nowhere, as that’s now in NYTimes :-)

lhrsfo

I don't know what "sheltering in a pandemic" means. I thought we were all encouraged to eat out in restaurants once they reopened. Hence the government subsidy.

But, to the topic in hand, it will clearly be a long time before business travel returns to previous levels, but it's not going away completely. I've had three casual conversations just today with friends and two of them revealed that a child had just been / is on a business trip - one filming in Germany, one meeting a customer in Italy.

Chris2013

I don't think business travel with go away completely either but I think many companies will drastically scale it back. Just from the company I work for, we've saved into the millions of dollars just in the past 6 months from cutting our business travel. It'll be different for every industry obviously but I can't see companies going back to the previous model of doing business. And with teleconferencing capabilities being drastically expanded during COVID, it's difficult to justify paying thousands of dollars for a single trip when the goal of that trip could be accomplished in a Zoom meeting.

Now of course there are exceptions that need face-to-face interaction to be successful however those will likely face increased scrutiny.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

I can work from anywhere and therefore I travel at least once a week and work as I go. I'm good at finding great hotel deals on Priceline (when you become a VP member you often get the name of the hotel at an Express Deal price) and use the AA AC as "my office." Plus PL is always sending me 10% to 15% off coupons, I have more than I need. It's a good life. Of course I have no Spouse/SO or children.