Canadian airline revenue continues to climb: StatCan

A new Statistics Canada report says that operating revenue for the 24 largest Canadian air carriers totalled $8.3 billion in the first quarter of 2024, up 8.1% compared with the same quarter of 2023.

At $7.2 billion, passenger revenue remained the main revenue source for airlines in the first quarter of 2024, while air cargo generated $522.3 million in revenue, the Aug. 23 report says.

In Q1, Canadian carriers also transported 22.0 million passengers on scheduled and charter services.

Operating revenue climbs

During Q1, operating revenue for the 24 largest Canadian airlines totalled $8.3 billion, 8.1% higher than the first quarter of 2023 and 25.3% higher than the same quarter of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

At $7.2 billion, passenger revenue represented 87.2% of total operating revenue in the first quarter of 2024.

Total operating expenses, meanwhile, were $8.3 billion in the first quarter of 2024, 5.8% higher than in the first quarter of 2023 and 28.8% higher than the same quarter in 2019.

Other operating expenses, such as depreciation and maintenance, accounted for the largest share (51.5%) of total operating expenses in the first quarter of 2024, followed by turbo fuel (25.1%) and wages, salaries and benefits (23.3%).

Progressively rising traffic flows

Of the 22.0 million passengers Canadian airlines flew in the first quarter, 21.5 million were on scheduled flights and 436,000 on chartered flights.

While this represents an increase of 7.3% from the same quarter of 2023, it was 5.4% lower than the pre-COVID level in 2019.

In the first quarter of 2024, there were 8.8 million passengers on domestic routes and 13.1 million international passengers, StatCan says.

Among the international passengers, 5.4 million had taken transborder flights (between Canada and the United States) and 7.8 million were carried on other international flights.

Scheduled (non-charter) traffic was 57.5 billion passenger-kilometres in the first quarter, while capacity was 68.0 billion available seat-kilometres, resulting in a load factor of 84.7%.

This was slightly above the 82.3% load factor of the same quarter in 2019, says StatCan.

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