The Dallas Morning News Aviation Biz Blog wrote THIS post yesterday about Continental’s business class passenger traffic being down.  Significantly, there is an abrupt drop in trans-Atlantic travel.  Continental has a reputation for being an excellent business class product and has a very loyal group of customers for their trans-Atlantic destinations.  I am, however, unsurprised at that sharp decline.  That is a cost that businesses address very rapidly in situations involving declining revenues and/or profits. 

The company I work for, a Fortune 500 DoD contractor as well as an aviation industry supplier, mandated coach travel for business trips overseas back in October.  In addition, all travel (including domestic) must be approved at the director level.   I must say that those rules have had a noticeable effect too.   Many people known for being routinely gone on business trips are now routinely in their office doing work. 

It has also imposed some hardships.  I have one co-worker who had to travel to Finland on business last Saturday.  He had to travel to New York City, connect to a flight to Helsinki, connect to another flight to a very northern town in Finland and then travel by car for 2 hours to the destination.  Now, ordinarily I do not approve of the rather lavish use of busines class even on transcontinental flights but I would have given him the business class seat on that trip.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax