Canada's airports handled 158.9 million passengers in 2025, still just short of 2019. Travel to the United States fell while domestic and overseas flying grew.
Why this matters: where Canadians fly is changing fast, and the country's busiest airport is also one of its least reliable. Our flight data shows how often departures from each major airport arrived an hour or more late.
Key Takeaways
- Transborder traffic to and from the US fell 7.9% in 2025 to 29.4 million passengers, while other international traffic rose 5.1% to 41.1 million.
- 10.0% of departures from Toronto Pearson arrived 60+ minutes late, against 3.7% at Vancouver and a European average of 4.1%.
- Toronto Pearson handled 6.5% fewer passengers in 2025 than in 2019, while Montreal and Calgary grew by around a tenth.
Canada's Busiest Airports in 2025
Four airports dominate Canadian air travel. Statistics Canada counts every passenger who boarded or left a flight at each airport.
Source: Statistics Canada, Table 23-10-0253-01, Air passenger traffic at Canadian airports, annual, passengers enplaned and deplaned, released 21 July 2026.
Toronto Pearson handled 46.0 million passengers, almost as many as Vancouver and Montreal combined. The big four together accounted for about 71% of all passengers at Canadian airports. Airport operators publish slightly higher totals using their own counting rules: the Greater Toronto Airports Authority reported 47.3 million for Pearson, Vancouver Airport Authority more than 26.9 million, Aéroports de Montréal 22.4 million and Calgary Airports 19.4 million, a record for both Vancouver and Calgary. For a global comparison, see our ranking of the world's busiest airports.
Canadian Air Travel Is Back Near Its 2019 Peak
The pandemic cut passenger numbers at Canadian airports by more than 70%. The recovery took four years and is still not quite complete.
Source: Statistics Canada, Table 23-10-0253-01, Air passenger traffic at Canadian airports, annual, passengers enplaned and deplaned, released 21 July 2026.
Traffic grew by just 1.3% in 2025, a much slower pace than the 4.1% rise in 2024, and reached 97.6% of the 2019 level. Statistics Canada counted 1.88 million passenger flights at Canadian airports in 2025, up 4.0% on 2024. EU air travel, by comparison, passed its 2019 level in 2024, according to Eurostat. Our US airports statistics show how Canada's southern neighbour compares.
The US Slump and the Shift to Domestic and Overseas Travel
Canadian airports report three types of traffic: domestic, transborder (to and from the US) and other international. In 2025 they moved in opposite directions.
Source: Statistics Canada, Table 23-10-0253-01, Air passenger traffic at Canadian airports, annual, passengers enplaned and deplaned, released 21 July 2026.
Transborder traffic fell to 29.4 million, 7.9% below 2024 and 8.8% below 2019. Domestic traffic rose 2.9% and other international traffic grew 5.1% to 41.1 million, 10% above 2019. Overseas routes carried 11.7 million more passengers than routes to the US in 2025, against a gap of 5.2 million in 2019. Domestic flying remains the largest segment by a wide margin, but it was still 5% short of its 2019 level in 2025.
How the Four Biggest Airports Have Recovered
The national total hides very different stories at the largest airports. Compare each pair of bars below.
Source: Statistics Canada, Table 23-10-0253-01, Air passenger traffic at Canadian airports, annual, passengers enplaned and deplaned, released 21 July 2026.
Montreal Trudeau (up 10.0%) and Calgary (up 9.3%) both handled clearly more passengers in 2025 than before the pandemic, and Vancouver edged 1.1% above its 2019 total. Toronto Pearson is the exception: it handled 3.2 million fewer passengers than in 2019. Pearson's growth in 2025 was also the slowest of the four at 0.4%, while Montreal's traffic dipped by 0.4%.
Each Airport Has a Different Traffic Mix
The share of passengers flying to the US, within Canada or overseas varies widely between the four hubs. This mix explains much of how each airport fared in 2025.
Source: Statistics Canada, Table 23-10-0253-01, Air passenger traffic at Canadian airports, annual, passengers enplaned and deplaned, released 21 July 2026.
Montreal is Canada's most international hub, with almost half of its passengers on overseas flights. Calgary relies most on domestic travel, with two in three passengers flying within Canada. Toronto Pearson has the largest share of US traffic, a quarter of all passengers, so the drop in transborder travel hit Pearson hardest: its US traffic fell by about 1.1 million passengers in 2025, from 12.6 million to 11.5 million.
Transborder Traffic: 18 Months of Decline
Statistics Canada also publishes monthly counts of passengers screened at security at Canada's eight largest airports. These figures show when the fall in US travel began and how long it lasted.
Source: Statistics Canada, Table 23-10-0312-01, Screened passenger traffic at the largest airports in Canada (monthly), eight largest airports, data to September 2026.
Transborder traffic fell year on year in every month from February 2025 to July 2026, 18 months in a row, with the steepest drop of 13.5% in November 2025. From March 2026 the declines shrank each month, though each 2026 month was measured against an already weak 2025. August and September 2026 brought the first increases. August's rise is partly a base effect: Statistics Canada noted that Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flight cancellations and delays in mid-August 2025, caused by labour disruptions, reduced screened passenger counts that month. US traffic in September 2026 was still 6.1% below September 2024.
Passenger Traffic in 2026 So Far
The screening data runs to September 2026, giving the most recent view of traffic at the eight largest airports. Compare each sector with the same nine months of 2025 and 2024.
Source: Statistics Canada, Table 23-10-0312-01, Screened passenger traffic at the largest airports in Canada (monthly), eight largest airports, data to September 2026.
Screened passenger numbers at the eight airports rose 3.0% in the first nine months of 2026, led by domestic travel, up 5.7%. Transborder traffic was still 2.4% lower than a year earlier and 8.4% lower than in 2024. Halifax grew fastest of the eight airports at 9.1%, while Edmonton was the only one to see fewer passengers. Statistics Canada notes that the conflict in the Middle East that began at the end of February 2026 has pushed up jet fuel prices and airfares.
How Reliable Are Canadian Airports? Canada vs Europe
Traffic volumes do not show how reliably flights run. We compared departures from Canada's 15 largest airports with departures from airports in Europe over the same 12 months.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, departures from the 15 largest Canadian airports and from airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Departures from Canada's largest airports were almost twice as likely to arrive an hour or more late as departures from European airports, at 7.4% against 4.1%. The gap is wider for delays of three hours or more, at 1.0% against 0.4%. Recorded cancellation rates are also much higher in Canada, though they vary widely between airports, as the next charts show. For the European figures in detail, see our European airports statistics.
Which Canadian Airports Have the Most Delayed Flights
This ranking shows the share of departures from each airport that reached their destination 60 or more minutes late. The grey bar is the European average for comparison.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, departures from the 15 largest Canadian airports, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Toronto Pearson had the worst record of the 15 airports, with one departure in ten arriving an hour or more late, and 1.2% arriving three or more hours late. Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax and Toronto Billy Bishop also exceeded 8%. The western airports did much better: Vancouver (3.7%), Victoria (3.9%), Calgary (4.2%) and Edmonton (4.5%) all stayed at or below 4.5%, close to the European average. Canada's busiest airport is also its most delayed.
Cancellation Rates at Canadian Airports
Cancellations follow a different pattern from delays. Treat the highest figures here with care: they come from smaller airports, where fewer flights mean a handful of disrupted days moves the yearly rate a long way.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, departures from the 15 largest Canadian airports, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
The highest recorded cancellation rates were at Toronto Billy Bishop (16.2%) and St. John's (14.5%), two of the smallest airports in the ranking. St. John's is on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, and it also had the highest share of departures arriving three or more hours late (1.6%). Quebec City (8.9%), Halifax and Ottawa follow. AirAdvisor's flight database does not record why each flight was cancelled, so these figures show only where cancellations happened. Among the big four, Vancouver had the lowest cancellation rate at 2.8%, and Toronto Pearson the highest at 4.5%. Our report on global flight cancellations puts these rates in a wider context.
References and Sources
- AirAdvisor's flight database, Canadian airport and European country reports, data for 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026, accessed 13 November 2026.
- Statistics Canada, Table 23-10-0253-01, Air passenger traffic at Canadian airports, annual, released 21 July 2026: statcan.gc.ca
- Statistics Canada, "Airport activity changes course in 2025", The Daily, 21 July 2026: statcan.gc.ca
- Statistics Canada, Table 23-10-0312-01, Screened passenger traffic at the largest airports in Canada (monthly), data to September 2026, accessed 13 November 2026: statcan.gc.ca
- Statistics Canada, "Screened passenger traffic at Canadian airports, July 2026", The Daily, 28 August 2026: statcan.gc.ca
- Statistics Canada, "Screened passenger traffic at Canadian airports, August 2025", 26 September 2025: statcan.gc.ca
- Greater Toronto Airports Authority, "GTAA Reports 2025 Annual Results", 6 March 2026: newswire.ca
- Vancouver Airport Authority, "YVR breaks all-time cargo and passenger records in 2025", 3 February 2026: worldairlinenews.com
- Aéroports de Montréal, "ADM announces its financial results for 2025", 30 March 2026: newswire.ca
- Calgary Airports, "YYC Calgary International Airport welcomed 19.4 million passengers in 2025", 5 February 2026: yyc.com
Methodology
Annual passenger figures come from Statistics Canada Table 23-10-0253-01, which counts passengers enplaned and deplaned at each Canadian airport and splits them into domestic, transborder (Canada to and from the US) and other international sectors. We used the latest revision, released on 21 July 2026; it puts the 2024 total at 156.9 million, slightly above the 156.7 million first published in July 2025. Airport operators count passengers in their own way, so their totals, quoted in the text, run slightly above Statistics Canada's. Airport shares, growth rates and changes since 2019 are AirAdvisor calculations from the table. Monthly and 2026 figures come from Statistics Canada Table 23-10-0312-01, which counts passengers screened at security at the eight largest airports; this measure differs from enplaned and deplaned passengers and excludes arriving passengers. The latest month available on 13 November 2026 was September 2026.
Delay and cancellation figures come from AirAdvisor's flight database, which merges schedule and status data from OAG and other providers, for departures from the 15 largest Canadian airports between 1 November 2025 and 31 October 2026. A flight counts as delayed when it reached the arrival gate 60 or more minutes after its scheduled time; delayed shares exclude cancelled flights. The database stores one record per flight number, so codeshare flights appear more than once; we therefore publish percentages rather than flight counts. The Canadian average weights each airport by its flight records. The European average covers departures from airports in the 27 EU member states, the UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, calculated as all 60+ minute delays divided by all flight records. The database does not record the reasons for delays or cancellations. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place and passenger numbers to one decimal place in millions. All figures are historical; no forecasts are used.
