There may also be competitive pressures to keep flying, Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith said in an interview. “I hear many of our corporate customers saying that the day they lose an account because they weren’t somewhere face-to-face will immediately bring them back to the way operations were before.”
Company executives travel for many reasons — from business development and customer support to trade shows, conferences and meetings with local staff. Trips for intracompany activities are likely to bear the brunt of the cuts “because client relationships aren’t at stake”, AlixPartners’ Fabre said.
The world’s biggest airlines collectively lost a whopping $126 billion in 2020 and are set to lose another $48 billion this year. Picture: NATHAN LAINE/BLOOMBERG Royal Dutch Shell has created online control rooms with interactive 3D simulations of oil platforms and plants, giving engineers virtual access from home. In Troy, Michigan, Kevin Clark, the CEO of Aptiv, a former car parts unit of General Motors, is using drones and Oculus augmented-reality headsets to show customers the performance and manufacturing run rates of plants in Mexico, Hungary or China.
Companies have acknowledged that reducing the level of flights is one way of reducing climate change.Businesses globally are under pressure from investors and regulators to shrink their COemissions. The European Commission rolled out an ambitious climate plan in July to force all industries to shift away from fossil fuels. Aviation has long been a target even though it accounts for only about 2.4% of global human-induced COemissions.
Air France, for instance, is developing its so-called leisure-business category for passengers who buy premium class tickets for holiday travel, according to Steven Zaat, the group’s CFO. Thirty-two Air France 777s are fitted with “quick change” systems that allow the airline to reduce the size of its business-class cabin. The airline is still confident about a rebound in business travel, but “we can always reconfigure our planes if necessary”, Zaat said in a Bloomberg TV interview.