Monthly civil aviation statistics, October 2021
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Released: 2022-01-04
Highlights
Major Canadian airlines carried 3.1 million passengers on scheduled and charter services in October, surpassing the 3-million mark for the second time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this was more than triple the number of passengers carried in October 2020, it was 47.3% of the pre-pandemic level reported in October 2019.
With traffic at 7.0 billion passenger-kilometres and capacity at 10.4 billion available seat-kilometres, the passenger load factor (the ratio of passenger-kilometres to available seat-kilometres) was 67.4%.
The $917.7 million operating revenue earned in October 2021 was slightly under half (48.2%) of the operating revenue earned before the pandemic in October 2019.
Fourth wave of pandemic
In October, Canada was experiencing another wave of the pandemic, and some provinces responded with increased public health measures. While several introduced vaccine mandates for entry to non-essential businesses by this time, the federal mandate for air travelers did not come into effect until October 30.
In late November 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a new variant of concern, Omicron, prompting Canada to implement new travel restrictions as well as apply a travel ban to a list of nations. However, data in this release do not yet reflect these impacts on airline travel.
On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO. In the months that followed, Canadian air travel remained well below historical levels. Unless otherwise specified, comparisons are made with the same month in 2019 (also referred to as "pre-pandemic levels"), when airline activity levels were in line with historical trends.
Moderate improvements continue
Canadian Level I air carriers flew 3.1 million passengers on scheduled and charter services in October. While down 52.7% from the pre-pandemic level of October 2019, it was a moderate improvement over the 57.5% decline reported in September (from September 2019).
On a monthly basis, the number of passengers flown in October increased 6.4% from September. Although both domestic and international volumes generally decline from September to October, the number of passengers on international routes increased with eased travel restrictions in effect for the full month.
At 7.0 billion passenger-kilometres, traffic in October was 59.5% below the pre-pandemic level posted in October 2019. Capacity was 10.4 billion available seat-kilometres, down 51.3% from October 2019.
The passenger load factor was 67.4% in October, the lowest since June 2021. This was almost 14 percentage points lower than the 81.0% posted in October 2019.
Each passenger travelled an average of 2,238 kilometres in October, down 14.5% from October 2019.
At 96,000, the number of flying hours in October was 46.1% below the pre-pandemic level.
Operating revenue earned by Level I carriers totalled $917.7 million in October, a decline of 51.8% from the $1.9 billion reported in October 2019.
Note to readers
The Monthly Civil Aviation Survey covers all Canadian Level I air carriers: Air Canada (including Air Canada Rouge), Air Transat, Jazz, Porter, Sunwing and WestJet (including Swoop, WestJet Encore and WestJet Link).
The average passenger trip length is calculated by dividing the number of passenger-kilometres by the number of passengers. Trips across Canada and around the world are included in this calculation.
The data in this monthly release are not seasonally adjusted.
Data for the previous three months have been revised.
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).
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