Maybe they realize that flying these days is a basically awful experience, and a 5 hour flight means more like 8 hours door-to-door so why not do a little to make it a bit more tolerable.
It's actually that they don't want people to lose a day of effectiveness to save money. Some quick math - for an investment bank, average wages can be as much as $400K/year. Divide that by 200 days, and you have someone getting paid $2,000/day. If flying coach kills their productivity for a day, saving $1,000 doesn't amount to much. At the senior levels, this is much more true. Of course having one policy for execs and another for everyone else has many negative consequences.
Yeah, companies who hire consulting firms also get worried about this. Jr consultants on planes 3 or 4x a week and when you get them at your office they are unhealthy and not as effective as they should be. Smart clients force the firm to fly the consultants less in most cases (the economics of paying for biz class aren't as attractive or necessarily the point)
