Business travel: mixed signals

Evidence that business travel is returning is an important trend for airlines, which get an outsized share of revenue from high-fare road warriors.

TripActions, a travel agency that caters to corporate customers, says business-related trip bookings up to Thanksgiving are six times higher than this time last year, which would far outstrip the roughly 40% increase in people boarding planes in the U.S.

Airlines believe that business travel depends on more people returning to offices, which hit a plateau in April. And on that front, there is encouraging news from security company Kastle Systems: Nearly half of office workers in the nation’s top 10 markets have returned to offices, up 4 percentage points from before Labor Day.

Delta Air Lines President Glen Hauenstein said recently there has been “a step up” in business-travel bookings since Labor Day, revenue from corporate accounts has jumped more than 10% in recent weeks — fares are higher — and “business is going to have a very strong fall.”

Others are more restrained. “As we get to the fall, we’ll see how that goes,” said American Airlines CEO Robert Isom.