London — Virgin Atlantic, majority owned by Richard Branson, mentioned demand for journey from the US to Britain had slowed, echoing a warning from its part-owner Delta Air Strains over the impact of US financial uncertainty.
Delta slashed its first-quarter revenue estimates on March 10, citing weakening decrease US client and enterprise confidence as worries about tariffs and rising costs take maintain.
Virgin Atlantic, which specialises in connections between Britain and the US and the Caribbean, mentioned it was seeing a decrease degree of demand popping out of the US after a “very sturdy” begin of the yr.
“Once we say alerts of a slowdown in demand … we’ve had weeks the place it’s been flat, we’ve had a couple of weeks the place it’s been adverse,” CFO Oliver Byers instructed reporters on Monday.
“We predict that’s fairly a pure response to the final client uncertainty there’s within the US on the minute.”
Shares in British Airways-owner IAG traded down 6% in morning offers.
Total Byers mentioned he nonetheless anticipated revenues from journey from the US to Britain to develop this yr in contrast with final yr.
Journey from Britain to the US was “fairly sturdy”, he mentioned. “We’re seeing company demand being very sturdy and nonetheless rising considerably.”
Virgin Atlantic returned to profitability for the primary time for the reason that pandemic in 2024, posting a pretax revenue earlier than exceptionals of £20m in contrast with a lack of £139m the earlier yr.
Virgin Atlantic was affected by the virtually daylong shutdown of Heathrow, its most important UK hub, earlier this month. It cancelled 75 flights because of this and diverted six.
“The price for the home-based carriers goes to run into the tens of hundreds of thousands,” Byers mentioned, declining to touch upon the price to Virgin Atlantic particularly.
Reuters
