Airlines Cut Seats to the U.S. as Canadians Stay Away

Airlines are having to revamp their plans ahead of the peak summer travel season as Canadians avoid trips to the United States amid an escalating trade war between the two neighbors.

A grass roots effort by Canadians to boycott all things American — from U.S. grocery products and alcohol to tourist hot spots — had already set off alarms across the United States travel industry, which warned of multibillion dollar losses.

Now, about two months since President Trump took office and launched an attack against Canada’s economy and its sovereignty, the fallout from Canadians’ resulting anger is becoming clearer.

Canadian airlines are eliminating tens of thousands of seats to the United States this April, a peak period when Canadians travel to warmer destinations. The reductions range from 7 percent by Air Canada to 25 percent by Flair Airlines, a discount airline, according to Visual Approach Analytics, an aviation research company.

“We’re seeing Canadians book away from the U.S.,” said Courtney Miller, the founder and managing director of Visual Approach Analytics. “The Canadian airlines are feeling this effect disproportionately.”

Travel agencies, in response, are also changing how they advertise flight packages.

“We completely stopped promoting the U.S. because of the backlash from the consumers,” said Flemming Friisdahl, the chief executive of The Travel Agent Next Door, a Canadian company with 1,500 travel agents in its network.

The agency is selling far fewer trips to the United States, he added, as travelers redirect their spending to destinations in Europe and elsewhere.

“It’s such a shame that we’re in this position today because we’ve always been amazing neighbors,” Mr. Friisdahl said.

Air Canada, the country’s largest airline, said it would be reducing some U.S. flights to warmer destinations “to reflect commercial demand,” Christophe Hennebelle, a spokesman for the airline, said in an email.

Just how large the drop in demand is remains a little up for debate.

OAG Aviation Worldwide Limited, an analytics company based in the United Kingdom, said advance bookings for routes between Canada and the United States from April through October are down by roughly 70 percent, compared to the same time period last year.

While airlines have seen a decrease in demand, some said it has not been as pronounced as what OAG said.

“No data source is showing a decline of the magnitude that OAG is reporting — for Air Canada or in the market overall,” Mr. Hennebelle said.

Brad Cicero, a spokesman for Porter Airlines, said air travel between Canada and the United States remained robust, adding that the airline was “finalizing the summer schedule to ensure that flights are deployed where there is the greatest demand.”

John Grant, the analyst who prepared the OAG report, said the data had been supplied by a major travel distribution company, but he could not divulge its name because of an agreement with the provider.

Canadian residents took about 586,000 trips to the United States in February, a 13 percent drop from the same month last year, according to Canada’s national census agency. In a recent report, it also found that the number of car trips across the border in February fell to 1.2 million from about 1.5 million in February 2024.

Canadian seasonal travelers who spend part of the year in sunny American states, known as snowbirds, are part of the shifting tide.

Florida is the destination feeling the greatest effect from the reduction in seats on flights from Canada, the report from Visual Approach Analytics said, with airports in Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers and Orlando seeing up to a 30 percent cut in April.

Major airlines in the United States are also responding to falling demand from Canadians.

Scott Kirby, the chief executive officer of United Airlines, recently said the airline had reduced the frequency of numerous routes to Canada because of a “big drop in Canadian traffic” into the United States.

United canceled a new daily route between Toronto and Los Angeles that it had planned to begin in May and said it would also reduce the frequency of other existing routes to Canada.

Beyond any desire to boycott America, a weaker Canadian dollar has made the United States more expensive and is also part of the equation for some travelers.

“The exchange rate certainly helps us be more firm in our in our expression of not wanting to go the U.S.,” said Katherine Velan, a travel adviser based in Montreal. Some travelers are opting for Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica and other destinations where the Canadian dollar stretches further.

Ms. Velan, who spoke while on vacation herself in Costa Rica, said she and her friends had encountered a group of Americans while dining out who sent a bottle of wine to her table.

“They said, ‘Oh my God, we’re so sorry. We love Canadians.’”