Delta President Glen Hauenstein told analysts during the airline’s first-quarter earnings call Wednesday that business travel trends are “choppy,” and that “corporate volumes [are] expected to be flattish” compared with 2024.
It’s a sharp change from the outlook Delta gave at the start of the year.
CEO Ed Bastian took at least one positive out of the trend. “Encouragingly, it hasn’t gone negative,” Bastian said, referring to corporate travel. “It’s flat on a year-over-year basis. So there’s a 10-point velocity rate change from where were at the beginning of the year to where we are now, which is flat.”
Delta’s Stalled Growth
Bastian said “growth has largely stalled” because of the uncertainties regarding global trade, and the primary impact has been to the main cabin, where there has been a “softness in both consumer and corporate travel.”
Bastian said it is premature to make a corporate travel projection too far ahead but if there is a prolonged “sense of uncertainty,” then without a doubt there would be a continued drop-off in corporate travel.
Uncertainty around the business outlook had increased dramatically since President Donald Trump announced his plan for tariffs last week. Trump announced Wednesday that he was placing a 90-day pause on many of the most punitive tariffs, and replacing them with 10% tariffs on goods from around 75 countries. He gave no such break on goods from China, which are subject to 125% tariffs.
The Delta CEO noted that historically corporate travel is one of the first things corporations minimize during uncertain times or periods characterized by downturns.
