Delta yanks its full-year guidance thanks to “broad economic uncertainty around global trade”
Delta reported its first-quarter earnings Wednesday and pulled its full-year guidance amid ever-shifting trade policy.
Three months ago, Delta Air Lines said 2025 had the potential to be its best fiscal year in a century. Guess the airline never knocked on wood, because its outlook isn’t so rosy anymore.
In its first-quarter earnings report, released Wednesday morning, the airline withdrew its full-year guidance, with revenue largely flattened. The airline said capacity growth will be flat in the second half of the year and issued second-quarter revenue guidance of between a 2% decline and 2% growth.
“With broad economic uncertainty around global trade, growth has largely stalled,” read a statement from CEO Ed Bastian.
Overall revenue ticked up 2% to $14 billion. That’s below even the downwardly revised outlook of 3% to 4% sales growth on the quarter Delta gave last month. (The carrier was projecting 7% to 9% growth in January.)
Passenger revenue reached $11.4 billion on the quarter, up 3% from the same period last year. Delta reported 7% growth in premium ticket sales, compared to a 1% dip in main cabin sales.
Those figures put some IRL data to a growing fear that tariffs are already squeezing US plane travel. In an interview with CNBC, Bastian called the Trump administration’s trade policies “the wrong approach” — a departure from his comments in November that the administration could be a “breath of fresh air” for the industry.
Last month, aviation analytics firm OAG said bookings for US-Canada flights between April and September are down by as much as 76%.
Delta’s stock has had a turbulent 2025 to say the least. With shares down about 40% on the year as of Tuesday’s close, the airline has lost more than $16 billion in market cap this year.
America’s largest airline isn’t expected to be alone in its disappointing performance this year, either. Together with rivals American Airlines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlines, the big four US airlines have collectively shed $40.8 billion in market cap year to date. For context, that’s about the value of 272 Boeing 737 Max 10s (at $150 million a piece).
Delta continues to pull in significant revenue from its credit card partnerships. It pulled in $2 billion from American Express on the quarter, which it said was a 13% jump from same period last year. Delta logged $7.4 billion in credit card revenue last year. TD Cowen analyst Tom Fitzgerald last year said airlines score a profit margin of about 50% on their credit card businesses.
