Business travellers prefer to fly economy – 5 Mar 2007

The majority of business travellers fly standard economy class and almost half choose British Airways as their flag carrier.

The 11th annual Barclaycard Business Travel Survey indicated business travellers are not swayed by the introduction of a premium economy class by some airlines.

The research found that standard economy is the most popular class, chosen by 46% of more than 4,000 business travellers surveyed. That’s an increase of 3% on last year’s survey.

In total 14% of business travellers said they travelled most by business class in 2006, a drop of 3% on 2005.

When asked if premium economy had impacted on their travel plans, 78% said it had no effect. Only 15% said it had encouraged them to upgrade their travel purchase from economy and 4% said it had led them to downgrade their seat class.

Barclaycard Business director of commercial cards Denise Leleux said: “The introduction by some airlines of a premium class does not seem to have encouraged business travellers to either buy up or buy down.”

Meanwhile, BA was chosen by respondents for the sixth year in a row as the most trusted airline brand despite recent threats of strike action. This shows BA’s popularity has in fact increased by 1% on the previous year. Second most popular airline was Virgin Atlantic, followed by EasyJet in third. In 2005 EasyJet was second and Virgin was third.

Bmi came fourth and Ryanair came fifth.