Key Facts

What Is Driving The Decline In Travel Demand From Canada?

In early 2025, soon after President Donald Trump ramped up rhetoric about tariffs and making Canada the “51st state,” outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged citizens to reconsider visiting the U.S. The impact was immediate. Flight Centre, Canada’s largest travel agency, told Forbes it saw a 40% decrease in leisure bookings in February 2025 compared to the same month the previous year, and a 20% cancellation rate on prebooked trips to the U.S. Air travel demand between Canada and the U.S. began “collapsing,” with flight bookings for summer and fall declining by over 70%, according to OAG data. Over the entirety of last year, Canadian visitation to the U.S. declined 22%—amounting to a drop of roughly $4.5 billion in visitor spending. Unlike most travel boycotts, which tend to fizzle out over time, the Canadian effort has not lost momentum. Last month, the number of Canadians taking road trips into the U.S.—the most common way of visiting—was down by 35% compared to March 2024, according to data released from Statistics Canada. Nearly a quarter (23%) of Canadian travelers have canceled a previously planned trip to the U.S., according to a Longwoods International tracking study of Canadian travelers. “In my 37 years in the travel industry, I have never seen anything like what the Canadians have pulled off,” Amir Eylon, President and CEO of Longwoods International, told Forbes.

Why Cutting Routes Is A Last-Ditch Move By Airlines

In general, trimming scheduled flights is not the first lever an airline will pull, Mike Arnot, an airline industry consultant at Cirium, told Forbes. “Cutting flights can mean losing access to slots” at busy airports, which are authorized time windows granted to specific airlines to land or take off. Slots are valuable assets, sometimes bought, sold, or swapped between airlines. So, before cutting routes, a carrier is more likely to lower fares to generate demand or, conversely, to raise fares to cover more cost. The next step would be to switch to more fuel-efficient aircraft, “and only then cut flights,” Arnot said. Air Canada did not respond to Forbes’ request for clarity about what drove the cuts.

How Airlines Decide Where To Trim Flights

Carriers needing to cut capacity tend to start by identifying routes with higher costs and lower demand. “Demand shows up in booking trends … It’s all informed by household economics, the local and national economy and, of course, geopolitics,” Arnot told Forbes. “Airlines are likely to trim routes with smaller regional aircraft, which consume more fuel per seat generally,” or cut back on flights with lagging bookings, especially if passengers have alternatives, he said. New York City is served by three major airports—John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark. If an airline serves all three airports, it can “trim a flight or two per day, and avoid any major impact to options for customers while saving the company money on costs,” Arnot said.

Tangent

Even the most profitable U.S. airlines are compressing capacity in this uncertain environment, with Delta Air Lines announcing it will pause flights on select routes this summer.

Further Reading

Asia And Europe Are Running Out Of Jet Fuel—But ‘No Country Is Immune’ (Forbes)

Canadians Visiting U.S. By Car Down 35% In 2 Years (Forbes)