Around 20.5 million Canadians visited the United States in 2023, according to the latest available figures. Those numbers will be way down in 2025, according to OAG, who’ve been analyzing travel data since 1929. Outside of wars or the pandemic, they’ve never seen anything this dramatic before.
“This is insane. We are treating our Canadian neighbors like absolute shit,” tweeted Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Source: OAG
Despite airline schedule changes and capacity being redirected to other markets, a more troubling trend emerges from forward demand data: future flight bookings between Canada and the US have collapsed.
Using forward booking data from a major GDS supplier, we’ve compared the total bookings held at this point last year with those recorded this week for the upcoming summer season. The decline is striking — bookings are down by over 70% in every month through to the end of September. This sharp drop suggests that travellers are holding off on making reservations, likely due to ongoing uncertainty surrounding the broader trade dispute.
For all scheduled airlines operating between the United States and Canada any fall in consumer confidence and subsequent changes to planned travel are a concern, especially in such a large market and when taking place at such short notice. Unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences is once again impacting the airline industry adding to what had already become a softening market. For those that are still planning to travel there may be some airlines offering particularly cheap airfares over the next few months as they seek to stimulate demand but for the airlines it will be a nervous few months, especially as the traditional “snowbird” market from Canada to the US could be badly impacted next year if the situation doesn’t improve quickly.
