I think there's a certain contingent that reacts to any regulation with "fine, then I'll take my ball and go home". Country has safety requirements, they deny any service to that country as retribution.

The real world has more shades of grey. Delta can probably put a note in their scheduling system to make sure the airliner in question doesn't go to that country. They also know how much money they lose if they take their ball and go home, and probably wouldn't even be flying the route if it was completely unprofitable. (There are probably partners that rely on the service, and maintaining a good relationship with business partners is important too in a less financially-obvious way.)

I mean I'm Ghanaian and DL156 is the only non-stop flight from the US to Ghana, and only one of two to the entire region afaik (the other being EWR to LOS)

Just going based on how long it's run, the prices myself and family have paid for tickets relative to destinations a similar distance away, observed usage of capacity on each flight, and the fact it has literally no competition, they wouldn't up and cancel it short of some sort of safety threat to their staff or business. Definitely not because a problem airliner gets noted.

Would you like to contribute your knowledge to the conversation then?

It seems like it would be a knee-jerk overreaction to be, but Delta obviously has a lot of management issues and a shortsighted knee-jerk decision from them (or most giant corporations) would not surprise me.

Well I'm Ghanaian, my parents flew back into the US on DL 157 just yesterday. DL 156 is the same flight that's taken me home since I was a kid.

And I guess even without the personal context, just common sense tells me that setting up a direct tranatlantic route and then keeping it going for as many years as they have should still communicate the profitability there, and that being told their plane with obvious safety issues isn't welcome isn't why they'd cancel the flight.

I guess to me it's just feels like a very US thing to think this. Like if you picture Ghana as some tiny African country it's obvious: you probably imagine it's just a small line item on Delta's balance sheet, duh big corporation doesn't care about your feels and will take their ball home...

But that's the only direct flight from the US to Ghana, direct flights from the US to West Africa are not common (afaik there's only one to Ghana and one to Nigeria) and they pretty much get to name their prices on the flight and keep demand (and knowing how much it costs me to visit home they very much do take advantage of that).

Delta had at one point been developing Accra into a hub for their other destinations in western Africa but not sure they're still going in that direction with the way the transportation world has changed in the past few years. Either way, they probably do have a good bit of investment in facilities there.