Aircraft movement and civil aviation statistics, January 2025

Highlights

In January, major Canadian airlines flew 6.9 million passengers on scheduled and charter services, while capacity reached 23.5 billion available seat-kilometres.

Canada's major and select small airports recorded a total of 380,486 aircraft movements in January, up 19.6% from January 2024. Local movements jumped 44.2% year over year to 114,564 in January 2025, while itinerant movements rose 11.5% to 265,922.

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

Major airlines' capacity increases more than demand

The seven Canadian Level I air carriers flew 6.9 million passengers on scheduled and charter services in January, compared with 6.8 million in the same month of 2024.

The number of passenger-kilometres in January 2025 was 19.0 billion, a 2.2% increase from January 2024, while capacity reached 23.5 billion available seat-kilometres, up 4.9%. As a result, the passenger load factor (the ratio of passenger-kilometres to available seat-kilometres) was 81.0% in January 2025, down from 83.1% in the same month one year earlier. This was the lowest load factor since May 2022, when the industry was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chart 1: Passenger load factor, Canadian air carriers, Level I

Source: Table 23-10-0079-01.

Level I carriers flew 191,000 hours (+3.8%) in January 2025 and generated $2.4 billion (+3.3%) in total operating revenue.

Increased local and domestic aircraft movements

At Canada's major and select small airports, local aircraft movements, which can be weather dependent, rose by 44.2% in January as compared with the same month in 2024, when a 15.2% year-over-year decline was recorded. In January 2024, severe winter storms impacted aircraft movements at several airports in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, while in January 2025, weather conditions were among the driest on record, allowing for increased flight school activity.

Chart 2: Total aircraft movements at major and select small airports, by class of operation

Source: Table 23-10-0296-01.

Notably, local movements at Boundary Bay (12,088 movements) in January 2025 were the highest recorded at the airport for the month of January. At Saskatoon/John G. Diefenbaker International, local traffic activity more than doubled (+137.4%) year over year in January to reach 4,236. In contrast, there were 65.6% fewer local movements at Fredericton International—the fourth consecutive month of decline following the gradual suspension of operations at a flight school.

At the same time, itinerant domestic movements rose 14.2% year over year to 214,512 in January, driven by other commercial operations including flight school activity.

Following two consecutive months of year-over-year declines, transborder movements (to and from the United States) in January edged up 0.8% from the previous year to 32,401. Other international traffic (outside the United States) rose 1.9% to 19,009.

Focus on Canada and the United States

Transborder aircraft movements (to and from the United States) represented 10.7% of total itinerant movements at Canada's major and select small airports in 2023 and 11.1% in 2024. The four largest Canadian airports—Toronto/Lester B. Pearson International, Montréal/Pierre Elliot Trudeau International, Vancouver International, and Calgary International—have accounted for approximately 75% of all transborder traffic each year since 2022.

For more data and insights on areas touched by the socio-economic relationship between Canada and the United States, see the Focus on Canada and the United States webpage.