Looks like they aren't expecting an early rebound for long-haul travel then?

Still it's puzzling to me as well, considering they are positioning their product as a premium offering and the A350s seem like the perfect way to establish themselves in this segment, whereas A339's key advantage, as I understand it, is cost-per-seat reduction partly through additional capacity, which depends on planes filling up, and shouldn't be a primary concern anyway now that the fuel prices have fallen.

Unless they were able to obtain some other benefits by agreeing to postpone the orders/switching them with another customer I can't really see the rationale for this. I'd think doing the opposite and prioritizing A350 deliveries even if it meant having to run them short-haul would make more sense for the airline.