 "An Air Canada airplane at Newark Liberty airport. AFP")
Newly released data suggests airline travel between Canada and the United States is “collapsing” after US President Donald Trump unleashed a new kind of tariff war with its neighbouring nation. According to the data released by the aviation analytics company OAG, flight bookings between the two nations went down by a whopping 70 per cent after Trump introduced heavy duties against Canadian goods.
While comparing available bookings from March 2024 to March 2025, OAG looked at how many people have booked trans-border flights between March 2024 to March 2025, OAG looked at how many people have booked trans-border flights. The data showed that the number of tickets booked was down anywhere from 71 per cent to 76 per cent.
This has also led to the reduction of available capacity for passengers on flights between the two countries. OAG believes that this was likely to be a response to decreasing demands. According to the aviation analytics company, more than 320,000 seats have been removed by airlines operating between the two countries.
The disinterest in travelling to the US
According to OAG, the steep decline in bookings suggests that current capacity cuts do not even begin to cover the current disinterest in travelling to the US. The company said the dramatic drop in bookings suggests that Canadian travellers are holding off on making reservations, probably due to the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the tariff war.
The report came to public light shortly after Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney called the latest round of Trump’s tariffs a “direct attack” on Canadian workers. While the decline in travel between Canada and the US is expected in the current circumstances, the substantial 70 per cent drop in bookings would require drastic changes from airlines as well.
Beyond the ongoing trade dispute between the two nations, Canadians have maintained that they are feeling increasingly uneasy crossing into the US following several high-profile incidents of foreign visitors being detained by Ice.