Hello from bizjournals.com! David Mueller (dmueller7@xxxxxxxxx) thought you might like the following article from Pacific Business News: The sender's comment about the article: AA and UA still don't get it: Premium passengers want bizjets; everyone else wants Southwest. United, like American, says it will win back premium fliers Howard Dicus ------------------------------------------------------------ Both of the biggest U.S. airlines are now on record as pinning their hopes for profitability on a hypothetical return of business travelers paying premium prices when they can fly more cheaply on discount carriers on most routes. The chief executive of United Airlines made it clear this weekend that UAL hopes to emerge from Chapter 11 with renewed business from the high-paying corporate fliers who once produced so much United revenue that it could afford to pay six figure salaries to pilots who worked an average nine days a month. CEO Glenn Tilton said, "We're going to make sure we continue to focus on the core of United's passengers -- that is the business traveler," the Reuter news agency reported. United, still in Chapter 11, thus joins American Airlines, so far skirting bankruptcy, in telling the world that it thinks it will one day see a return of business travelers who willingly pay up to a third more than they would be charged on discount carriers. On May 21, American CEO Gerard Arpey told his shareholders American had chosen a strategy of "compete versus retreat." His predecessor Don Carty had said only two months earlier that costs had to be cut because business fliers would not pay more than 30 percent above discount fares for a premium flight, without explaining why he thought business fliers would pay even that much. Not all airline CEOs believe in the return of the full price business flier. On April 16, Northwest CEO Richard Anderson said, "We believe that revenues will not recover to historical levels." A survey early this year of corporate travel managers by their professional association found that a majority of them, having made deep spending cuts in the months following 9/11, found their travel budgets had been cut permanently, with senior executives expecting them to make permanent use of the savings they found in 2002 by flying less, flying coach, and never paying full price under any circumstances. Copyright(c) American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved. You can view this article on the web at: http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2003/05/26/daily60.html