Monthly civil aviation statistics, May 2023

Released: 2023-07-25

Highlights

Major Canadian airlines carried 6.4 million passengers on scheduled and charter services in May, up 22.0% from the same month in 2022. This is the highest monthly recovery of passenger numbers since the COVID-19 pandemic started, at 5.6% below the May 2019 level.

With traffic at 17.4 billion passenger-kilometres and capacity at 20.3 billion available seat-kilometres, the passenger load factor was 85.5% in May 2023.

Operating revenue earned in May exceeded the pre-pandemic level for the sixth consecutive month.

COVID-19 no longer a global health emergency

More than three years after the start of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared in May that COVID-19, which caused the biggest disruption in aviation history, is no longer a global health emergency. As most countries, including Canada, had already removed travel restrictions months earlier, travel had already been recovering before this declaration by the WHO.

Despite the threat of a labour disruption at one of the Level I carriers and technology problems at another, resulting in delays and cancellations, passenger numbers and other operating statistics in May reached their peak recovery since the beginning of the pandemic.

Operating statistics get closer to pre-pandemic levels

Canadian Level I air carriers flew 6.4 million passengers on scheduled and charter services in May. This was 5.6% below the pre-pandemic level reported in May 2019 and the closest passenger numbers have been to pre-pandemic levels since the onset of the pandemic. The number of passengers on international flights in May 2023 exceeded the pre-pandemic level for the first time.

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

With traffic at 17.4 billion passenger-kilometres and capacity at 20.3 billion available seat-kilometres, the passenger load factor (the ratio of passenger-kilometres to available seat-kilometres) was 85.5% in May, compared with 83.9% in the same month four years earlier.

Each passenger travelled an average of 2,697 kilometres in May, up 2.8% from the pre-pandemic level.

At 162,000, the number of flying hours in May was 9.0% below the pre-pandemic level.

Operating revenue earned by Level I air carriers totalled $2.2 billion in May, 11.6% higher than in May 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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