Canada–U.S. bookings are down 70%? Not really, says Air Canada

This story was updated on Friday, March 28 at 2:01 p.m. EST

Amid ongoing trade tensions between Canada and the United States, air capacity between the two countries, and future bookings, are experiencing a decline. But how bad is it?

UK-based global travel data provider OAG published a blog entry this week, claiming that passenger bookings on Canada–U.S. routes are down by 70 per cent compared to the same period last year.

In its report, OAG, using its data, compared the total number of scheduled one-way seats between the two countries filed on March 3, and those filed on March 24.

It found that more than 320,000 seats have been removed by airlines operating between Canada and the U.S. through to the end of October.

The company points out that the most noticeable cuts are in July and August, where airlines have cut capacity by some 3.5 per cent.

Meanwhile, future flight bookings between Canada and the U.S. “have collapsed,” writes John Grant on OAG’s blog.

Using forward-booking data from “a major GDS supplier,” the company compared the total bookings held at this point last year with those recorded this week for the upcoming summer season.

“The decline is striking — bookings are down by over 70 per cent in every month through to the end of September,” Grant writes.  “This sharp drop suggests that travellers are holding off on making reservations, likely due to ongoing uncertainty surrounding the broader trade dispute.”

Air Canada pushes back

70 per cent is quite a drop. Is the situation really that grim?  

Shortly after PAX – and several other aviation and trade news outlets – published a story about OAG’s findings, Air Canada’s Christophe Hennebelle, vice president of corporate communications, reached out to us, pushing back at OAG’s claim that advanced bookings between Canada and the U.S. are down about 70 per cent compared to last year.

“We can confirm that this is not reflective of Air Canada’s booking patterns, nor the state of the market, based on all information sources available to us,” reads a company statement that Hennebelle shared.

“While we have experienced a softening in the transborder market – and have shifted a limited amount of capacity to adapt to it as previously announced – the decline Air Canada has experienced is not of the magnitude cited in the blog. According to our information, when aggregating all indirect and direct booking channels, the decline is significantly less.

Air Canada added that it will be discussing trends and volumes on its quarterly calls, as usual.

Booking are down, "but not by 70%"

Even Mike Arnot, a communications advisor who represents Cirium, an aviation analytics company, is questioning OAG’s data.

Posting a comment to LinkedIn yesterday, Arnot said Cirum’s schedule and booking data are “no where near” the “stark” numbers OAG has circulated.  

“Our team has done about a dozen analyses over the past two weeks for a variety of top-tier outlets. Even on certain sun markets, the cited data is off," Arnot wrote. 

In a separate LinkedIn post, Arnot noted that advance booking data is limited by its source: online travel agencies and GDS partners. “It's a sample,” he wrote.

He said he ran the numbers with Cirium for all airlines from Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver to New York City, Miami, Denver, Chicago, and Los Angeles for bookings made between January to March, for travel April, May, and June 2025 “and each compared to 2024.”

“Bookings are down, yeah — as reported from the OTAs! — but not [by] 70 per cent,” Arnot wrote. "The airlines have their own curves to look at."

Porter says numbers are growing

PAX reached out to Porter Airlines to get its opinion on the matter. In a response, spokesperson Brad Cicero said there remains "a solid base of air travel between Canada and the U.S." 

"We are currently finalizing the summer schedule to ensure that flights are deployed where there is the greatest demand," Cicero said. 

He added that Porter is "the only carrier with consistent and significant capacity increases, up to 42 per cent greater on Canada-U.S. routes year over year, during the spring period." 

"Passenger numbers are growing at a greater rate than capacity," he said. 

WestJet also got back to us and said that OAG’s report is "inconsistent with our travel bookings." 

A shift in travel patterns

Route adjustments at airlines are to be expected, but some of the latest changes, as previously reported, are a direct response to a shift in travel behaviors as Canadians rethink U.S. travel and fly elsewhere.

As PAX confirmed earlier this week, WestJet, for one, will not proceed with a Calgary-LaGuardia route – despite announcing the service in January.

The seasonal itinerary was supposed to begin May 24 and end on August 30, and would have complemented WestJet’s year-round, daily flights from Calgary to New York’s JFK airport during the same time period.

In addition, the airline has also suspended planned service between Edmonton (YEG) and Orlando International Airport (MCO), Edmonton and Montreal (YUL), and Montreal and Winnipeg (YWG) from its summer 2025 schedule.

In an earlier statement to PAX, WestJet said it has “observed a shift” in bookings from the U.S. to other sun destinations such as Mexico and the Caribbean, and to transatlantic destinations such as Ireland, Scotland and Iceland.

“We remain focused on continuing to fly where there is demand,” the airline said.

This past February, Canadian residents flew back from 585,700 trips to the U.S., which represented a 13.1 per cent decline from the same month in 2024, reports Statistics Canada.

Land border crossings from the U.S. have also seen a significant downturn in recent weeks. According to the data, Canadians returning by land is down 23 per cent year-over-year, while Americans entering Canada by land is down 7.9 per cent year-over-year.

According to the latest data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), nearly 500,000 fewer travellers crossed the land border from Canada into the U.S. in February compared to the same month last year.

The number of travellers entering the U.S. in a vehicle dropped from 2,696,512 in February 2024 to 2,223,408 last month, reaching levels not seen since cross-border travel normalized after the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is a developing story.  

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