British Airways’ launch of a daily Heathrow-Las Vegas flight this week marks a shift toward the premium leisure market as corporate traffic shows no sign of picking up.
Speaking in Las Vegas, BA chief executive Willie Walsh said: “This is not a temporary downturn in business traffic. Short-haul business travel volumes will not come back. It is a structural change.”
At the same time, Walsh said: “Premium leisure has been remarkably resilient. It has been a strong segment over the last two years and continues to be strong.” The BA boss said he does expect long-haul business traffic to return when the economy recovers.
Las Vegas became the 19th US city served by BA, with a mid-afternoon departure from Heathrow timed to allow connecting flights from around Europe.
Walsh said: “We looked particularly at European connectivity. After London, the second biggest market to Las Vegas is from Germany, and there is great interest in Ireland.
“I would not describe it as a major shift in approach. But there are two or three additional destinations in the US we would like to serve, although not in the current economic climate, and others in Asia – probably eight to 10 destinations in all.”
He described advance bookings to Las Vegas as the best he had ever seen and said he hopes to improve BA’s balance sheet by generating significant sales in euros and dollars.
BA’s premium traffic was down 7.9% in September on a year ago, against an 8.6% fall in September 2008.