Major airline cancels multiple U.S. routes for troubling reason | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

When airlines cancel routes, passengers relying on them must adjust their travel plans and find alternatives. This can be especially challenging for customers booking with a low-cost airline.

Unfortunately, travelers will soon face this reality, as a popular airline plans to dramatically cut its summer routes. Worse, there’s a troubling reason the airline is dropping so many flights, and it points to problems for the U.S. economy as a whole.

Here’s the airline that will eliminate routes, along with its rationale for the change.

A Canadian airline is significantly trimming its summer flight schedule.

TheStreet

WestJet cutting summer routes to major U.S. destinations

The affected airline is WestJet, which is the second-largest airline in Canada. It plans to reduce flight capacity by 32% and remove a shocking 15 routes from its schedule, Aviation A2Z reported.

Some were planned routes that never got off the ground, while others were already underway.

WestJet routes the airline has fully canceled for 2026 include the following.

Atlanta (ATL) to Edmonton (YEG)
Boston (BOS) to Vancouver (YVR)
Chicago (ORD) to Edmonton (YEG)
Las Vegas (LAS) to Toronto (YYZ)
Las Vegas (LAS) to Winnipeg (YWG)
Los Angeles (LAX) to Toronto (YYZ)
Nashville (BNA) to Vancouver (YVR)
Nashville (BNA) to Winnipeg (YWG)
Orlando (MCO) to Vancouver (YVR)
Raleigh-Durham (RDU) to Calgary (YYC)
San Diego (SAN) to Vancouver (YVR)
San Francisco (SFO) to Edmonton (YEG)
San Francisco (SFO) to Vancouver (YVR)
Seattle (SEA) to Edmonton (YEG)
Seattle (SEA) to Kelowna (YLW)

As AviationA2Z noted, “several markets are now unserved, while others continue through competing airlines.”

WestJet is canceling routes for this troubling reason

While WestJet’s flight cuts are bad news for travelers who want to fly on an affordable airline between these destinations, the problem actually goes much deeper.

That’s because this string of WestJet cancellations reflects a broader issue affecting the travel industry and U.S. economy as a whole.

The problem is the sharp drop in demand for transborder flights, as fewer people want to travel from Canada to the United States.

This issue has persisted for some time, and the airline’s decision to remove all of these flights from the schedule makes it clear that things are unlikely to improve anytime soon.

Cross-border travel from Canada to U.S. has collapsed

The number of Canadian vehicles traveling to and from the United States declined by 30.9% in 2025 compared with the number of vehicles crossing the border in 2024, CBC reported recently.

Prior to 2025, cross-border numbers had been fairly consistent.

However, Presley, the Canada Border Service Agency, processed only 17 million Canadian vehicles at the U.S. border in 2025, compared with 24.6 million the year prior. That’s 7.6 million fewer visitors.

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This decline is unprecedented, as one expert told CBC.

“I will say that the decline that we’re seeing in 2025 is notable because of its length and the depth of the decline,” said Laura Presley of Statistics Canada. “It hasn’t been too often in our history where we’ve seen drops of that level, for as long of a period.”

Why declining Canada-U.S. travel is so concerning

Canadians have many reasons to avoid travel to the U.S., according to TravelPulse Canada. These include the following.

The exchange rate, as Canadians must spend $1.50 for every U.S. $1
Threatened trade tariffs
President Donald Trump’s talk of making Canada into a U.S. state
Safety concerns, in light of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdowns on non-citizens, as well as changes to the rules regarding gender designations on passports

Whether geopolitical tensions or a poor exchange rate are more to blame for this travel decline, they’re likely to have negative economic effects, given that the U.S. Travel Association reports Canadian tourists spent about $20.5 billion in the U.S. in 2024.

The WestJet changes, unfortunately, suggest that this money probably isn’t coming back to the U.S. anytime soon. This means those who depend on tourist spending could take a hit in 2026.