The jury is out on when – or if – business travel volumes will close in on pre-pandemic levels, but one banking analyst believes business traffic is not going to “come back at all.”
Speaking on CNBC Squawk on the Street segment, Helane Becker, senior research analyst at Cowen, said 2021 end of year cancellations combined with early 2022 staffing shortages and weather-related cancellations will impact the airline and business travel sectors.
She said she had seen some 20,000 cancellations at the end of 2021 and added that she expects airlines to be cautious when they announce fourth quarter earnings in the coming weeks.
“Typically March will make the quarter but January is going to be a tough month and really the first six weeks are going to be tough. We don’t have business coming back and we don’t see it coming back at all to pre-pandemic levels,” said Becker.
In its earnings call on 13 January, Delta Air Lines said it anticipates
a return to "solid profitability" in March, with "significant demand"
from pent-up consumer and business travel.
JetBlue said in late December that it was cutting capacity until the middle of January.