When you shoot a zombie, does it count as murder, or at least attempted murder?

That question actually is of some epistemological importance in the context of President Donald Trump’s decision last month to reverse most – but not quite all – of his predecessor’s actions opening up travel to and trade with the Caribbean communist island of Cuba. That policy change triggered accusations from some quarters that Trump is killing the U.S.-Cuba travel market.

But can one kill that which was already dead?

U.S. airlines jumped in to the U.S.-Cuba market with great fanfare in 2016. The early projections from the Obama White House and economic team were that soon there would be 1.8 million passengers a year flying between this nation of 320 million people who are, by Cuban standards, nearly all insanely wealthy, and the impoverished island 90 miles south of Florida.

So, most U.S. carriers rushed to offer service to Cuba. Since no market existed previously, and since the Cuban economy is so stunted it’s likely that they did not expect the kind of immediate profitability that the Obama Administration had implied. So perhaps they rushed to launch service to Cuba in an effort to stake an early claim in a market that they might eventually actually be worthwhile to serve, to grab free service rights that they might be able to sell later at a profit to a stronger competitor, or to protect their market share positions in U.S. markets like south Florida where large numbers of Cuban-Americans live and conceivably might want to visit their familial homeland and relatives from time to time.

But it never made any economic or marketing sense for U.S. carriers to pour 10,000 seats a month into the U.S.-Cuba air market, as U.S. carrier did initially. The per capita income in Cuba is around $5,500 a year, or roughly one-seventh that of the state of Mississippi, which at just under $37,000 ranked last in 2014 among the 50 states in per capita income. But while Mississippi ranks just 31st in population among the states with just under 3 million residents Cuba’s population of 11.4 million would place it 8th, if it were a state, just behind Ohio and just ahead of Georgia. That means Cuba has, in relative terms, an inordinate number of extremely poor people. Developing profitable traffic demand among such a population likely will take decades, even if they eventually are allowed to travel at will, a right they still don’t have today.

Thus, nearly all of the passengers flying between the two nations were – and continue to be – Americans. Indeed, restrictions still imposed by the Castro regime block most Cubans from flying north, even if their American family members pay for the tickets. And most of those Americans flying to Cuba are, and likely will be for the foreseeable future, Cuban Americans traveling to visit family and friends who still live on the island. As leisure, rather than business travelers, they can be expected to be very price sensitive, a factor that promises to make it even more difficult for U.S. carriers to earn profits from their Cuban routes.

Meanwhile Americans who did fly to Cuba after the market opened last year quickly discovered that there’s not much to do there.

Cuba once was renowned as a vacation and party Mecca for wealthy Americans before the communist takeover of the government in January 1959. But since then there’s been effectively zero spending on tourism infrastructure. And what little tourism the island did receive came from budget-conscious vacationers from Central and South America, Canada and Europe. So there was little money to spend on keeping up the tourism infrastructure even if parties in power had wanted to do so.

Today, most Cuban hotels are run-down and staffed by Cubans who have no concept of the kind of service levels most Americans expect. The food in Cuban restaurants reportedly is quite tasty but in short supply, thanks to chronic shortages of meat and other key menu items. And an economy that purposely has been retarded by its dictatorial regime for more than 50 years cannot be expected to create very quickly, or maintain the kind of high-dollar, high-quality infrastructure necessary to support even a modest tourist industry.

And now, in the wake of President Trump’s reversal of the market-opening policies of President Obama that infrastructure development almost certainly will be further delayed. Indeed, that’s the point of Trump’s policy, which prohibits Americans from transacting business with government-owned entities in Cuba. Nearly all of Cuba’s hotels are operated by foreign companies under contract, but they’re owned almost exclusively by the Cuban military. So are most tourist-type restaurants. Even the properly licensed cabbies, driving their famous 1950s-era American classic cars, are, for the most part, off-limits to Americans in Cuba because most of the money from their fares goes to government entities.

So it’s no surprise that U.S. airlines are now stumbling over one another to get out of Cuba. U.S.-Cuba air capacity this fall will be down at least 20% from what it was at the start of 2017. And nearly all service to Cuban destinations other than the capitol city, Havana, either already has been discontinued or soon will be. On paper several carriers are requesting more service rights to fly to Havana. But, again, those requests, which aren’t being pursued with any real fervency, are being made not because the carriers think they can make money flying to Havana today (or any time soon), but to lay claim to assets (route rights) that are limited and which eventually might be worth something.

What may come as a surprise to Americans, however, is that the U.S. carriers began their retreat from Cuba well before President Trump announced his policy change. Heck, it began before he even took office. It was obvious very early on after U.S.-Cuba flying began that the passenger traffic numbers were horrendously low.

Break-even load factor – the percentage of seats an airline needs to fil to cover direct operating costs – used to be a really important number in the airline industry, back in the days when they were losing billions annually and struggling to fill seats. These days, with load factors running at 85% or higher and carriers reporting the first string of double-digit annual profit margins in their histories, most carriers don’t even bother to include their breakeven load factor numbers in their quarterly or annual public reports. But it’s generally understood that on most routes each of their flights needs to fill around 65% of their seats to fully cover its operating costs.

Given that assumption, the representative load factor data by U.S.-Cuba route (from January of this year) below explains why so many carriers are backing out of that market partially or entirely:

Delta – from Atlanta – 53.2%

American – from Charlotte – 49.1%

United – from Newark – 64.5%

JetBlue – from New York (Kennedy) – 58.3%

Delta – from New York (Kennedy) – 50.8%

Jet Blue – from Orlando – 56.1%

Jet Blue – from Fort Lauderdale – 63.2%

Spirit – from Fort Lauderdale – 43.2%

Only routes from Miami and Tampa – and one of three from Fort Lauderdale - operate above the assumed 65% breakeven load factor:

American – from Miami – 79.7%

Delta – from Miami – 71.8%

Southwest – from Fort Lauderdale – 70.5%

Frontier – from Miami – 67%

Admittedly, these weak performance numbers came early on in the lifecycle of U.S.-Cuba air service. And new routes often take time to develop before reaching profitability. But that development has not yet begun. Nor is it likely to any time soon. That’s why carriers are dropping lots of flights and discontinuing service altogether in some cases.

Tiny Silver Airways, flying turboprop planes from Fort Lauderdale to eight secondary cities in Cuba, cancelled all of those flights in April.

Spirit canceled service on its Fort Lauderdale-Havana route at the end of May, only six months after launching it.

Frontier a week later gave up its Miami-Havana flying.

American began cutting back service to secondary Cuban cities last November.

JetBlue switched from 200-seat Airbus A321s to 162-seat A320s on its Fort-Lauderdale-Havana routes and from A320s to 100-seat Embraer 190s on its Orlando-Havana flights. That move instantly improved its actual load factor performance but likely raised its breakeven load factor percentage point well into the 70s.

Just last week Southwest announced that it will drop two of its three routes to Cuba on Sept. 4.

The company issued a statement saying the decision came “after an in-depth analysis of our performance over several months which confirmed that there is not a clear path to sustainability serving these markets, particularly with the continuing prohibition in U.S. law on tourism to Cuba for American citizens.”

None of this should have come as a surprise to folks in the airline industry, though it appears, in some cases that it did. Nearly two years ago, in August 2018, writing in this space, I quoted outspoken industry analyst (and fellow FORBES.com contributor) Michael Boyd saying that there were greater profit opportunities for U.S. airlines in serving Golden Triangle Airport than in service Cuba.

“Never heard of it?,” I wrote then. “That’s understandable. It’s in eastern Mississippi, about half-way between Columbus (2012 estimated population about 23,500, down 2,500 from the 2000 census) and Starkville (2010 census population 23,888 not counting dorm-dwelling students at Mississippi State University). West Point (2010 census population 11,307) is the third “city” in the triangle referenced in the name of the airport, which boasts one 8,000-foot asphalt runway, free wi-fi, short security lines, close-in parking, 150 seats in the terminal plus modern restrooms and vending machines.”

Boyd noted that a vibrant and expanding manufacturing industry with strong international ties in eastern Mississippi created “much stronger airline revenue opportunities” there than existed in all of Cuba.

That’s still the case today, and likely will be the case for many, many years to come.

President Trump’s new policy for trading with and traveling to and from Cuba is intended to speed up Cuba’s economic and tourism development by forcing the government to privatize its holdings in the tourism and other industries. The hope is that by removing the financial incentive for those government entities to retain their control over those key economic sectors the Cuban people, likely with financial backing from foreign investors, will take control of those sectors and begin developing a capitalistic system once again on the island. But who knows how long it will take for that happen, if it happens at all?

So, it’s probably not fair to say that the President killed the development of the U.S.-Cuba travel market. It was, at best, only a zombie market. But it’s far from clear when, if ever, that zombie of a market will come to life.