Top 30 busiest Canadian airports in 2021 based on aircraft movements.

Source: StatsCan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...in_Canada#2021

Of note,

Only 1 airport recorded movements above 200,000, and that's Boundary Bay (YDT).
Lower mainland of BC has 4 of the top 8 busiest airports in the country. (YVR, YDT, YXX, CYPK)
YQB was the busiest airport in Quebec.
YOW barely made the top 30, coming in #28. (I expanded the list from 20 to 30 specifically because of YOW)
Notably absent from the top 30 is YHZ.

Is this CATSA staff problem isolated to YVR or are they having problems providing an acceptable level of service at other airports. We are still well below normal pre-COVID travel volumes. It is not a difficult position to staff. They probably have other people in other roles that can be shifted into front line roles to address specific problems in one airport or another.

I just don't get how they can mess up this badly.....

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vanc...ity-delays-yvr

YUL has been advising to arrive 3 hours before your flight for quite a while now, and that's for all flights, not just international.

https://www.admtl.com/en/flights/departures

YQM (Romeo LeBlanc International Airport in Moncton, #24) and YFC (Fredericton International Airport, #29) are primarily on the list because of campuses of the Moncton Flight College, the largest private pilot training facility in the country.

Similarly with London, with the Diamond Flight Centre and the International Test Pilot School. When ITPS finally gets their new fleet of Korean fighter jets, they will likely drastically increase as well. Plus, having the Diamond aircraft factory on site helps.

So seems like TPE will not be AC's map for a long time.

S23 schedule is out, and YVR-KIX will now operates as AC17/18. Currently planned as 4x weekly 788.

Funny you should mention both these airports.

Today I added the 2020 aircraft movement list as well, and therefore was able to add in the rank change in 2020 and 2021. Didn't have time to add the % change yet, but eventually will get to it.

Both YQM and YFC movements significantly dropped in 2021, and each lost quite a few spots, most likely due to the fact that foreign students were no longer able to enter the country last year.

YFC went form #14 in 2020 to #29 in 2021, a drop of 15 spots.
YQM went from #15 in 2020 to #24 in 2021, a drop of 9 spots.

None of them beat YOW though. In 2020, it dropped 18 spots (from #10 to #28), and stayed in the same spot in 2021. I think one of the flight schools closing in YOW in 2020 had a huge impact on movement numbers. That's 2 years now that YMX has more movements than YOW, which is crazy, considering YMX didn't even have an ATC tower in operation a few years ago.

Also, that's 2 years now that Boundary Bay is the busiest airport in the country. YYZ should regain top spot this year though. YVR should pass YXX, and YYC/YUL should make significant gains as well, with commercial traffic slowly creeping up to 2019 levels.

Evidently you can see what's not on AC's website yet. Does YOW-LHR show up yet in S23 (look for say June onwards)? Also, most of that far into the future would just be a dummy schedule copy of S22.

Not surprised that YHZ isn't there as in a 'normal' year, YHZ's usually around 95K annual movements. Not a lot of general aviation at YHZ.

YOW plummeting in rank is no surprise. In a normal year it's usually around 145K-150K movements. It shows that about the only movements that were steady in 2021 were cargo. Even general aviation would have been down significantly. Especially in 2020, but even in 2021 on Saturdays in the summertime, I would not be surprised if YRO/Ottawa-Rockliffe was busier movement-wise than YOW.

No YOW-LHR.

And I wouldn't call it a just dummy schedule copy if there are already some frequency change and a lot of flight number changes, but the schedule is not finalized for sure. There is definitely some work already put into it.

I’m assuming still no sign of AC9/10 either?

Any chance you scraped the entire sked for S23 and can post it? Much appreciated!

Nope.

Available for one week only:
https://pastebin.com/K5p0Dquz

Thanks nname! Do you work for an airline, is that where you can get access to this?

That's pretty awesome. Do you have winter 2022-23 for AC?

How about any WS looks ahead?

No. This is pulled from the schedule/flight status page from AC site, if you find a way to look beyond the date limited by the date selection widget.

https://www.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/...schedules.html

Once the schedule appear on the site, it should also OAG or other scheduling database soon, so this should be public info now.

Would also love to see the winter 2022/23 sked for AC :)

WS hasn’t loaded its S23 schedule yet, and only done minor changes to the winter schedule.

Flights to YCG now double (;)) with the addition of daily AC Q400 from Calgary. :tup:

What time are the big AC departure banks from YYZ?

I suspect they are early-to-mid morning after most of the eastern early flights and regional stuff comes in, then to Europe/western Canada in the early evening.