Why Is Air Canada Cutting Five U.S. Routes in 2027?
Air Canada is pulling out of five transborder city pairs when the summer 2027 schedule takes effect. The list, reported by Global News and CTV News, covers a mix of hub and leisure markets:
- Montreal to Seattle
- Vancouver to Nashville
- Vancouver to Raleigh-Durham
- Toronto's Billy Bishop airport to Boston
- Toronto Pearson to Charleston, South Carolina
The Charleston cut carries the most weight regionally. It was the only nonstop Air Canada service between Canada and South Carolina, and the airline says the route is gone indefinitely rather than paused for a season.
The border is doing the work
Route decisions usually come down to fuel, aircraft availability and expected demand. Here, demand is the story, and demand has a political dimension.
Canadian travel to the United States fell sharply from 2024 levels after repeated talk of annexation by President Donald Trump and successive rounds of tariffs during his trade war. Snowbird markets absorbed much of the damage. South Carolina, long a winter destination for Quebec and Ontario travellers, has been hit hard: a University of Toronto School of Cities report found trips to Myrtle Beach fell by more than 65 per cent between 2024/25 and 2025/26, the steepest drop recorded for any U.S. city.
That said, the decline is not a straight line. Statistics Canada figures cited in coverage recorded 1.9 million return trips in September, up 6.8 per cent year over year, while air travel overall remained 18.7 per cent below 2024 levels. A modest rebound off a badly depressed base still leaves a lot of empty seats. Air Canada has not published route-by-route passenger numbers, so the precise arithmetic behind each cut is not public.
The aircraft are being reassigned, not retired
Three new transborder services arrive in summer 2027: Toronto to Louisville, Montreal to Indianapolis and Edmonton to Newark. Read alongside the cuts, the pattern points toward shorter, denser routes feeding hub connections rather than long-haul flights into secondary U.S. cities. Nashville, Raleigh-Durham and Seattle are all reachable from Air Canada's Canadian hubs with a single connection.
If you were planning one of these trips
A dropped route vanishes from the schedule and from booking channels for the affected dates. Travellers who already hold tickets on a discontinued service fall under the airline's rebooking and refund rules, though the specifics depend on the fare and the notice given. For anyone building an itinerary around Charleston or Raleigh-Durham, the practical options become connections through larger U.S. gateways or a different carrier entirely.
Schedules for a summer season are typically loaded well over a year ahead, which means the 2027 map is being drawn now. The five routes above are no longer part of it.