While airlines were once preparing for a big year of U.S.-Canada travel, both tourist and business trips between the two countries dropped to record lows under the Donald Trump administration.
During the early weeks of his second term, Trump repeatedly referred to Canada as the “51st state” and former-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor” while on June 27 he announced that he was suspending all trade talks over a digital services tax that the country will soon start charging U.S. tech firms (the trade war began after Trump imposed a 25% tariff on most goods imported from Canada).
Both out of protest of Trump’s treatment of their country and fear created by high-profile stories of detentions at the border, Canadian travel to the U.S. has subsequently plummeted — according to statistics published by the Canadian government, road border crossings between the two countries were down 35% in April while air crossings fell by 14% in April and 24.2% in May from 2024. Travel agency Flight Centre also reported a 40% decline in corporate travel.
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Winter Florida flight discontinued, other airlines doing the same
Amid what is proving to be consistently low demand, a number of Canadian airlines have scaled back their service to different U.S. cities.
Last spring, flagship carrier Air Canada (ACDVF) cut flights to Washington, Houston, and Miami from Vancouver International Airport (YVR) as well as scrapped plans to launch a second flight between Montréal and San Francisco for the summer. Calgary-based WestJet axed routes from Vancouver to Austin, Kelowna to Seattle, Winnipeg to Los Angeles and Edmonton to Atlanta in April.
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“If we can derisk this a little bit and move and be a bit proactive and move capacity into other sectors [where] we see strength, I think that’s the right move right now in this context,” Mark Galardo, Air Canada’s executive vice president of revenue and network planning and president of cargo, told investors in a March earnings call.
As first reported by aviation website Simple Flying, Air Canada has now made an additional call to cut a route between Toronto and Jacksonville in northereastern Florida for the winter season.
Air Canada has cut or scaled back numerous routes to U.S. cities this summer.
Image source: Shutterstock
Drop in US-Canada far from temporary trend, travel numbers show
The route between Pearson International Airport (YYZ) and Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) will be suspended from November 2025 until March 2026 and returned for the summer season — the initial plan was to run it year-round for Canadians interested in sunny vacations during the winter.
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This route has in the past been run on a Bombardier CRJ 900 — the regional jet is able to transport 48 economy, 16 economy plus and 12 business class travelers.
While Canadian airlines have generally avoided overtly mentioning politics as the reason for the scalebacks, they have named lower demand from its customers as well as interest being redirected toward destinations in Europe and Asia.
“Due to a downward shift in demand, WestJet has updated its summer schedule to help Canadians fly where they want to go,” WestJet said in its own statement earlier this year. “Our schedule is continuously being adjusted based on demand.”
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