Another global airline cuts three US flights due to low demand | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

While some analysts expected the travel drop observed at the start of President Donald Trump’s second White House term to be a temporary ebb, the lower visitor numbers look like they’re here to stay — for future seasons, several airlines have drastically reduced their service into the U.S.

Classifying the decision as “the right move right now in this context,” Air Canada (ACDVF) cut flights between Toronto and Jacksonville, Vancouver and Houston, and Montréal and San Francisco last spring while Iceland-based Play is canceling all its service to the U.S. by October 2025.

💵💰 Don’t miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet’s free daily newsletter 💵💰

Fellow Nordic low-cost airline Norse Atlantic Airways (NRSAF) will similarly cut flights from Oslo and Berlin to Miami International and redirect the planes it would have used on those routes to flights connecting Scandinavian cities like Stockholm and Oslo to Thailand. In announcing the decision, founder and CEO Bjørn Tore Larsen said that demand has shifted away from the U.S. and toward other destinations across Europe and Asia.

‘Natural reaction to general consumer uncertainty’

The latest airline to announce a round of flight cuts to the U.S. is the London-based Virgin Atlantic. As first reported by aviation website Simple Flying, the carrier will reduce service on routes from London Heathrow (LHR) to Orlando, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.

While not cutting any of these routes entirely, the airline will reduce the number of times it flies between each of these cities from 10 to seven a week for San Francisco and seven to four for Orlando. The Washington, D.C. flight will be scaled back from seven to five in January 2026 and seven to four in February.

Back in April, Chief Financial Officer Oli Byers said that Virgin had “started to see some signals that U.S. demand had been slowing” and called it “quite a natural reaction to general consumer uncertainty.”

Virgin Atlantic is another airline that scaled back its U.S. service for 2026.

Image source&colon; Virgin Atlantic

Travelers are avoiding the U.S. out of protest, fears of immigration crackdown

The specific uncertainty referred to by the Virgin executive has been taking many different forms. While some travelers are outwardly protesting the Trump administration’s antagonistic stance toward other countries and international relations, others are afraid of getting caught up in its crackdown on immigration.

High-profile stories include that of 35-year-old Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney, who spent 12 days in detention after being stopped crossing from Mexico to San Diego, and 34-year-old German national Fabian Schmidt, who was detained at Boston Logan Airport (BOS), despite having a green card and living in the U.S. since 2008.

More on travel:

“A criminal conviction in the United States, false information regarding the purpose of stay, or even a slight overstay of the visa upon entry or exit can lead to arrest, detention, and deportation upon entry or exit,” the German Foreign Ministry’s page for travel to the U.S. has been updated to read after news of Schmidt’s case went public.

In a string of other countries issuing similar advisories to their citizens at the start of 2025, the United Kingdom wrote that “authorities in the U.S. set and enforce entry rules strictly” and that travelers “may be liable to arrest or detention if [they] break the rules.”