President Trump has been on a mission to get airlines both at home and abroad to buy American, and the White House may have just scored its most significant win yet… On Tuesday, Delta Air Lines announced that it had inked a deal with Boeing for up to 60 new 787-10 Dreamliners.
Why is this important? The deal turns Delta’s long-haul widebody aircraft renewal plan on its head with the Atlanta-based carrier pivoting away from Airbus for the first time in years.
Delta Air Lines orders up to 60 Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners
On Tuesday, Delta Air Lines announced its 2025 full-year financial results, but the carrier also had a couple of announcements lined up, the most significant of which was a major new order that it had inked with aerospace giant Boeing.
As part of its long-haul widebody fleet renewal and expansion plans, Delta has ordered up to 60 new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners.
- 30 planes are a firm order.
- While the other half are for options.
This order comes just months after Delta signed a deal for up to 130 Boeing 737 MAX single-aisle jets, consisting of a firm order of 100 airplanes and options for 30 more.
The 787-10 is the largest variant in Boeing’s Dreamliner range, with a length of 68 meters, it is capable of carrying up to 336 passengers up to 6,330 nautical miles.
The Dreamliner range can be powered by either GEnx engines or Rolls-Royce Trent 100 engines. But in another win for the Trump administration, Delta has confirmed that it has opted for the American-made GE Aerospace engines.
Delta will have a lower passenger count as it plans to install larger premium cabins on these aircraft, including more Delta One Suites, Delta Premium Select, and Delta Comfort. The planes will be primarily used on Delta’s Transatlantic and South American network
Airline has previously built renewal plans around Airbus jets
What’s interesting about this order is that it turns Delta’s long-haul fleet renewal strategy on its head. In recent years, Delta has been building its fleet around rival aircraft models from Europe’s Airbus.
Delta’s flagship long-haul aircraft is the Airbus A350-900, with 40 currently in the fleet. These will soon be complemented by the larger A350-100 of which Delta has 20 on order.
In addition, Delta has built a fleet of 39 new Airbus A330neo, which operate alongside its older fleet of classic A330s.
Admittedly, Delta does have a significantly sized fleet of long-haul Boeing aircraft, in the form of various variants of the 767. These aircraft are, however, already 25 to 30 years old, and, until now, Delta has had no Boeing-made plane to replace the 767s when they are retired.
Dan Janki, Delta’s chief financial officer, commented on Tuesday that the 787-10s would add “diversity to our widebody order book, while creating cost-efficient scale across all widebody fleets.”
“Our fleet strategy is positioning Delta for the future by enhancing the customer experience and driving operational improvements,” Janki continued.
Delta softens stance on impact of tariffs
When President Trump first announced sweeping tariffs on many countries that do business with the United States, Delta executives expressed concern.
Chief executive Ed Bastian even went so far as to call out Trump, saying that tariffs were the “wrong approach.”
Shortly after the tariffs were announced, Delta issued revised financial guidance on the back of plummeting travel demand. And while the airline was careful to never blame Trump’s tariffs as the reason for a drop in travel demand, the airline stated that the drop in demand came shortly after the tariffs were unveiled.
Since then, however, Delta has seriously toned down its language, and while Bastian noted that the airline had to navigate a “challenging environment” in 2025, there was definitely no mention of tariffs.
Delta pleased President Trump in September 2025 when he learned that the airline had accepted the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, saying that he thought Delta was “finally embracing MAGA.”
The airline also adopted the meaning of the acronym NOTAM to mean Notice to Airmen (the Biden administration had changed the meaning of NOTAM to the gender neutral Notice to Air Missions).
New deliveries from Airbus avoid tariffs through clever loophole
Delta still has 20 Airbus A350 aircraft to be delivered from Europe, and these would, ordinarily, be subject to Trump’s tariffs. Last May, however, it was revealed that the airline had devised a clever hack to avoid the tariffs.
Rather than Delta taking delivery of new Airbus planes directly from Europe, Airbus first flies them to a third country. In previous cases, this has been to Tokyo. At this point, the plane effectively becomes second-hand.
But to ensure the hack is watertight, Delta will only use this plane on international flights. In other words, the plane is never imported for tax purposes into the United States, so Trump’s tariffs can’t be applied.
