Chinese flight bookings to US in summer decline as tariff war ‘adds fuel to the fire’

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By Ralph Jennings

Published April 30, 2025

Advanced flight bookings from China to the US for this summer have declined, the latest data shows amid escalating trade tensions between the economic superpowers.

The total number of air tickets purchased for June travel dates fell 25 per cent between March 3 and April 28, according to figures compiled by marketing and tech firm China Trading Desk with help from the aviation data company VariFlight.

That means cancellations are outnumbering new bookings, China Trading Desk CEO Subramania Bhatt said.

For July travel dates, its statistics showed that total purchased tickets dropped by 24 per cent during the same period.

Actual travel to the US also eased by 14 per cent in the week ending April 14, compared with the previous week, and then by 30 per cent over the next seven days, due to “big swings underscoring the mood”, Bhatt said.

“Declining economic activity is one facet of the issue,” Bhatt said. “Other contributing factors include trade and economic frictions, tightened visa requirements and security incidents.”

Passenger numbers on China-US flights had declined about 10 per cent between February and March as US tariffs on Chinese imports began to rise, aviation analyst Li Hanming said.

And British aviation intelligence firm OAG found that the total number of flights from China to the US slid to 405 in April from 422 in March.

US President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs totalling 145 per cent on Chinese imports so far this year, taking the effective tariff rate to about 156 per cent. A fact sheet released by the White House shows that China now faces tariffs of up to 245 per cent on certain goods.

In response, Beijing has applied tariffs of 125 per cent on all US goods on top of earlier duties.

The tariff hikes have dampened interest in company visits and trade shows in the US as well as in other typical events linked to trade, Li said.

Other US-China issues were hurting travel even before tariffs began rising, analysts said. They pointed to visa barriers facing Chinese students, fears that students could not return to US campuses after returning to China for holidays, as well as news reports about hostility from some US immigration agents.

“Ultimately, do not expect this to change in the near future. Both sides are fixed in their views,” said John Grant, CEO of JG Aviation Consultants in Britain.

Seating capacities on airlines making direct China-US flights had recovered only 20 to 25 per cent since the Covid-19 pandemic, OAG Asia head Mayur Patel said on Monday. Many of those seats sell to students or the “diaspora” of people who normally travel between the countries, Patel said.

“The geopolitics was already there from the beginning,” he said. “The tariff thing just kind of adds fuel to the fire.”

Late last year, OAG had forecast that both US-based Delta Air Lines and United Airlines would increase their seats on China routes by 42 per cent, year on year, between October and March. The firm expected that Delta would add 40 per cent more flights, and that United would add 56 per cent more.

Both airlines made those increases, as OAG had expected, Patel said on Monday.

A Delta spokesman declined to share route-specific data but said on Tuesday that the carrier had no new plans to announce. United did not answer a request for comment.