Blaming America’s ongoing trade war with the world for depressed bookings amid uncertain expectations for business and household spending, Delta Air Lines says it is reducing growth plans this year and instead “focussing on what we can control.”

In a remarkable walk-back for the U.S.’s most profitable airline, Delta, which believed as recently as January that it was on track for its best financial year in company history, said Wednesday that disruptions in global trade have created such enormous uncertainty that it scratched its performance expectations for 2025.

Delta is cutting its flight schedule in anticipation of a slowdown in spending as businesses and households brace for higher prices.

“With broad economic uncertainty around global trade, growth has largely stalled,” CEO Ed Bastian said in a statement on Wednesday. “In this slower-growth environment, we are protecting margins and cash flow (by) reducing planned capacity growth in the second half of the year to flat over last year while actively managing costs and capital expenditures.”

In the first quarter, Delta earned US$240 million, or 37 cents per share. A year earlier it earned $37 million, or 6 cents per share.

Yet conditions have deteriorated since then with a burgeoning trade war leaving consumers and businesses unsure about what comes next. Both have begun to pull back on spending, and that includes travel.

Delta has said the company has been expecting strong travel demand to continue, and that has clearly changed.

Bastian said, “There’s nothing that we’ve been through these last couple of months to indicate there’s any cracks in any of this.”

“2025 is playing out differently than we expected at the start of the year,” Delta President Glen Hauenstein added. “As a result, we are adapting to current conditions while staying true to our long-term strategy.”

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