There has been a series of stories suggesting that airline reservations between the United States and Canada have collapsed, either because of prices, or because Canadians boycotted the United States, maybe they don’t want to become the 51st state, or just don’t like President Trump.
The complaint, originally from the OAG travel data supplier, is that passenger reservations have dropped by 70% (“Passenger reservations in Canada – US roads are currently decreasing 70% compared to the same period last year”). It never made sense, and I noted in the comments on certain blogs, it seems to be based on a very limited sample of data that does not make apple comparisons.
It is a collapse of the pandemic level cocovid-19. I flew to Canada a few weeks ago, my flight was quite full, but I guess it’s all other empty flights?
Meanwhile, data from the Cirium aviation analysis company show that reservations are declining – a little – but nothing like the aberrant numbers that OAG reports and dominate the titles … while noting that we do not have a complete window on reservations via direct channels.
Airlines remove their transport times a bit – around 3.5% for summer – and prices have become more attractive. Journalist Brian Stern Note that Air Canada says that the OAG report is simply false.
The Canadian dollar is low. This retains Canadian travelers. But about one million Canadians out of 40 million inhabitants have houses in the United States. They are not only away (although they go mainly to the United States during unbearable winters).
United States – Canada’s trips are decreasing, and its economic activity is probably slowed down. Titles of approximately a 70% drop are simply wrong. This would mean the abandonment of the market to the type of level that we saw at the end of March 2020 and July 2020 without travel restrictions or world pandemic.