Aircraft movement and civil aviation statistics, December 2024

Highlights

In December, Canada's major and select small airports recorded a total of 351,072 aircraft movements, down slightly (-0.4%) from December 2023. Itinerant movements decreased 1.0% year over year in December 2024, while local movements rose 1.3%.

During 2024, there were a total of 5.7 million aircraft movements at Canada's major and select small airports. This was 2.7% higher than in 2023 and represented 92% of the movements recorded in 2019.

Major Canadian airlines flew 7.3 million passengers on scheduled and charter services in December 2024, with a passenger load factor of 83.2%.

Consult the Aviation Data Visualization Hub to explore aircraft movement statistics and monthly civil aviation statistics in an interactive format.

Other international movements continue to trend upwards in December

In December, other international traffic (outside the United States) (+0.9%) posted a slight gain from December 2023, continuing the series of consecutive monthly year-over-year increases that began in April 2021. In addition, the 18,583 movements in December 2024 surpassed the pre-COVID-19 pandemic level from December 2019 by 12.1%.

For a second consecutive month, year-over-year declines were recorded in both domestic (-1.2%) and transborder (to and from the United States) (-0.7%) movements in December 2024. Decreases in flight school activity at London International (-36.7%) and Oshawa (-26.7%) contributed to the decline in domestic activity. Transborder movements dipped slightly to 33,883.

Chart 1: Total aircraft movements at major and select small airports, by class of operation

Source: Table 23-10-0296-01.

2024 in review: wildfires and uneven recovery in aircraft movements

Following the record-breaking wildfire season of 2023, preliminary estimates from the Canadian National Fire Database place the 2024 wildfire season as the second largest in terms of hectares burned in almost 30 years. Several communities, mostly in Western Canada, were subject to evacuation orders and alerts throughout the summer of 2024, while aircraft across the country, including helicopters and air tankers from smaller carriers (Level IV to VI), were deployed to combat the wildfires.

Total itinerant movements rose 1.7% to 3.9 million in 2024, led by growth in international traffic. Transborder movements increased 5.4% year over year to 434,539, as several routes that had been cancelled during the pandemic were restarted and other new routes were introduced. Other international activity also increased—up 9.6% to 201,295—and, for the first time, exceeded the pre-pandemic level from 2019. In contrast, domestic movements edged up 0.8% year over year to 3.3 million in 2024.

Major airlines' operating and financial statistics

The seven Canadian Level I air carriers flew 7.3 million passengers on scheduled and charter services in December 2024, 8.3% more than in December 2023, when there were six Level I carriers.

The number of passenger-kilometres in December 2024 was 19.6 billion, with a capacity of 23.5 billion available seat-kilometres. As a result, the passenger load factor (the ratio of passenger-kilometres to available seat-kilometres) was 83.2%, slightly above the 82.8% recorded in the same month one year earlier.

Chart 2: Passenger load factor, Canadian air carriers, Level I

Source: Table 23-10-0079-01.

Each passenger travelled an average of 2,673 kilometres in December, the same as in December 2023.

Level I carriers flew 192,000 hours in December 2024 and generated $2.9 billion in total operating revenue.

In 2024, Canadian Level I air carriers transported 87.4 million passengers. The overall passenger load factor for the year was 84.9%, down from 86.0% in 2023. With the exception of November and December, the 2024 monthly load factors were below those from the same months in 2023.