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Summer’s usually a boom time for airlines. This year could change that.
Airlines began 2025 projecting strong growth. But since then, one issue after another has cut into passenger demand.
Air traffic control problems are causing flight delays and cancellations, feeding into traveler worries over safety that began in January with the worst US air crash in decades. A global trade war and other economic concerns are driving down the value of the dollar, making overseas travel more expensive for Americans.
Meanwhile, foreign travelers are staying away either in protest over actions by the Trump administration or due to immigration concerns. There are also new security rules requiring airlines passengers upgrade to a “Real ID” to get through TSA checkpoints, which could keep some passengers from flying.
Add to that a general concern about the economy, and what’s usually a key money-making time for the airlines could fall short this year.
“It really is a perfect storm of a lot of things affecting the airlines,” said William McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project think tank. “Summer is definitely going to be softer for the airlines. And summer is where the biggest part of the money is made.”
Instead of gearing up to make big profits, airlines are cutting back flight routes for the rest of the year to save money, stepping away from earlier optimistic earnings guidance. Airline stocks measured by the NYSE Arca Airline Index have lost more than 20% of their value since January 29, the date of the fatal crash at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
That was the first high-profile airline incident this year, but it was far from the last. Since then, there has been a non-fatal crash in Toronto of a Delta regional jet as well as reports of near-collisions on the ground, and in the air, at various airports across the United States.
After the fatal crash in Washington, DC, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the airline saw an immediate drop in ticket sales as more passengers became worried about flying.
“It caused a lot of shock among consumers,” he said at an investors conference in March . “We saw a pretty immediate stall in both corporate travel and bookings. Consumer confidence and certainty in air travel started to wane a little bit as questions of safety came in.”
Concerns about safety haven’t been helped by recent reports of air traffic controllers overseeing flights at Newark Liberty International Airport briefly losing both radar and their ability to communicate with planes.
There were no crashes as a result of the air traffic control issues, but it did cause some controllers to put in for trauma leave. The drop in staffing led to long delays and cancellations for thousands of flights at one of the nation’s key airport hubs.