Monthly civil aviation statistics, January 2023

Released: 2023-03-29

Highlights

Major Canadian airlines carried 6.1 million passengers on scheduled and charter services in January, more than double the number of passengers in the same month of 2022, but 11.3% below the January 2019 level, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

With traffic at 16.5 billion passenger-kilometres and capacity at 19.7 billion available seat-kilometres, the passenger load factor was 83.7% in January.

Operating revenue earned in January exceeded the pre-pandemic level.

Winter conditions continue to impact flights, but less than in December

After a holiday season marked by flight delays and cancellations stemming from bad weather coupled with resource constraints, January was a calmer month, and passenger volumes were relatively unchanged from December, as is typical.

Recovery resumes in January

Canadian Level I air carriers flew 6.1 million passengers on scheduled and charter services in January, which was 11.3% below the pre-pandemic level reported in January 2019. This was an improvement from December 2022 (-14.9% from December 2019), but was still below the peak recovery reached in October (-9.4%) and November 2022 (-9.9%) from the equivalent months in 2019.

Chart 1 
Passengers carried by Canadian Level I air carriers, January, 2019 to 2023

With traffic at 16.5 billion passenger-kilometres and capacity at 19.7 billion available seat-kilometres, the passenger load factor (the ratio of passenger-kilometres to available seat-kilometres) was 83.7% in January 2023, exceeding the 81.6% recorded in January 2019, before the pandemic.

Since the start of the pandemic, the domestic sector had initially led the recovery in air travel, particularly during the period when international air travellers faced greater restrictions. However, the opposite was observed in January, as operating statistics for the international sector were closer to 2019 levels than for the domestic sector.

Each passenger travelled an average of 2,701 kilometres in January, up 1.6% from the pre-pandemic level.

At 164,000, the number of flying hours in January was 18.0% below the pre-pandemic level.

Operating revenue earned by Level I air carriers totalled $2.1 billion in January, up 7.5% from January 2019.

Chart 2 
Passengers carried, Canadian air carriers, Level I

Chart 3 
Passenger load factor, Canadian air carriers, Level I

Chart 4 
Turbo fuel consumed, Canadian air carriers, Level I

Contact information

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