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Business travel still hasn’t fully recovered from the pandemic’s downturn, and recent economic setbacks will make the road back even more difficult, leaving airlines dependent on leisure travelers who may be volatile in the post-Covid downturn.

First-quarter earnings were disappointing for U.S. airlines, with the top carriers that have reported full results so far — Delta, United and Alaska Air — all citing a shift in traditional booking patterns after already seasonally weak January and February.

Airlines have largely waived change and cancellation fees during the pandemic, and this has made it easier for leisure travelers to buy plane tickets in advance, making it more convenient to cancel trips at the last minute if necessary.

Before Covid, business travelers routinely bought flights close to the departure date, even if it meant paying a premium, and were more likely to travel in January and February than leisure travelers. But with the corporate travel recovery still lagging, the backstop isn’t quite there.

“We believe that demand is different from the structural situation, and we’re still figuring out that new normal,” United CEO Scott Kirby said on a call to discuss the airline’s first-quarter results.

None of the major airlines reporting this earnings season predicts a significant improvement in business travel this year, but they are not anticipating a deterioration in demand. Delta is stabilizing corporate flight traffic, recovering about 75% from pre-pandemic levels, President Glenn Hauenstein said on the company’s earnings call last week.

However, recent data indicate that this category of corporate spending is particularly vulnerable to financial stress, and airlines are beginning to acknowledge that this stress is real. After months of showing nothing but blue skies for air-travel demand, United offered the first break in that narrative. “It seems clear that macro risks are higher today than they were a few months ago,” Kirby said. “So our base case remains a mild recession or a soft landing.” This appears to be an inconsistency.

Demand for corporate travel from the technology sector was rising in the third quarter of last year, but took a step back amid layoffs in the sector and tighter price controls, Alaska Airlines said this week. The airline mainly caters to leisure travelers, but its focus on the West Coast makes it especially useful for the company’s business in the technology sector. According to Voice, business flight demand in the technology industry has recovered only 50% to 60% of pre-pandemic levels, compared to a 75% recovery for corporate travel in Alaska overall.

The carrier described the lackluster recovery in West Coast business travel as an “opportunity,” especially as more tech companies return workers to the office, but Alaska is also weighing capacity adjustments that suggest it won’t expect corporate road warriors to fill planes in the winter. months in the near future.

“We need to do a much better job of matching supply and demand in January and February, which looked weak,” said Andrew Harrison, the company’s chief commercial officer, on the company’s earnings call. “In some of the heavy traditional hub-to-hub commercial traffic markets, we’ll cut back and probably put that capacity elsewhere,” he added.

Meanwhile, the fall of Silicon Valley Bank into receivership of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on March 10 caused a significant reduction in United’s recent domestic business trip. This only lasted about two weeks, and demand has since returned to previous trend lines. But there is a concern that there is a quick response to the travel budget for banking sector problems.

While corporate travel has always been vulnerable to the economic downturn, the shift of many meetings to virtual platforms during the pandemic has forced a re-evaluation of how important in-person meetings are. There is no substitute for key client meetings and certain large group gatherings such as conferences and conventions. Contrary to early predictions of the pandemic, business travel is far from dead. But the corporate world has long been well-managed by zoom calls, so when costs need to be cut, travel is an easier bucket than it used to be.

United looks at business travel through three lenses: large corporations with airline contracts, travel through agencies engaged in such traffic, and tickets that can be purchased by businesses, including some small and medium-sized ones. In these three categories, the recovery rates to pre-epidemic levels increased from 95% to 101% in the first two weeks of April, from 85% to 97% in the first quarter. These are revenue measures, but they include the effect of ticket-price inflation. Given how much the economy has grown over the past few years, a 100% recovery in business travel to 2019 levels is not really a full recovery.

Airlines are still very bullish about the summer travel season in general, especially in international markets that were relatively closed last year. By that zeal they are justified. Incredibly, consumer demand for travel has remained strong despite rising ticket prices and a series of failed operational flare-ups at the airline. (United, to its credit, recently claimed its lowest first-quarter seat cancellations since 2012, though weather has affected many of its routes.) But the outlook for demand in the fall and winter is more worrisome. Even a mild economic downturn can still disrupt some of the spending habits that have helped offset unsustainable corporate spending. For example, leisure travelers were more willing to splurge on premium seats. Work-from-home policies mean they are filling up more seats on peak days, which were previously the domain of business travelers, than on the typical weekend. If money is tight, however, economy seats will remain and these combined business and leisure trips may dwindle.

It’s always what companies talk about when they start talking about recovery, and usually not in a good way. “If the economy softens further, we’re prepared for it,” said United’s Kirby. The company reduced its debt burden by about $4.6 billion last year, putting its balance sheet in a better position to withstand further weakness in the economy, and United has the flexibility to cut costs by cutting capacity, he said.

Southwest and American Airlines will report results Thursday. American earlier this month warned that first-quarter profit could fall short of estimates. The airline expects revenue per seat mile flown to increase about 26% from last year, hitting the midpoint of its previous guidance. This surprised some analysts, who had expected a particularly strong earnings performance in the US, given the strong position in Latin American markets, which are particularly popular for sun-seekers during the winter months.

Brooke Sutherland is a Bloomberg opinion columnist covering deals and industrial companies. A former M&A reporter for Bloomberg News, she writes the Industry Strength newsletter.