Southwest continues to miss business travelers

Southwest Airlines has high hopes for capturing business traffic once road warriors are back in the air, but it’s not planning for that anytime soon. For now, it’s all about the sunscreen and care packages.

“It’s a leisure world right now, until we get those frequencies flying again,” Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Watterson said of the airline’s mainly business-focused routes. “Business travel is what’s missing right now,” he said during a webcast Wednesday hosted by Aviation Week’s CAPA research group.

The Dallas-based carrier, which Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly claims is “the No. 1 business airline in the country,” will depend primarily on its historic appeal to leisure travelers pending a full return of business demand — something it doesn’t expect until 2023. That’s in contrast to rival airlines that say they saw a recovery in domestic corporate travel in early autumn which they hope will continue into next year.

United Airlines Holdings Inc. said in October that domestic business demand had rebounded to pre-delta variant levels or better, while Delta Air Lines Inc. said domestic corporate volumes in late September and into October reached the highest level in almost two years — close to 50 percent of 2019 levels. American Airlines Group Inc. has said “almost all” of its top corporate customers had resumed at least some travel by October.

Southwest took advantage of leisure demand that began to rebuild after a year of coronavirus-related travel restrictions and quarantines, shifting aircraft and employees to 18 new airports mostly in vacation destinations. It has also trimmed its multiple daily frequencies between business markets and estimated on Dec. 8 that revenue from managed business travel accounts will drop as much as 60 percent from 2019 levels in December.