Air Canada is introducing new daily routes from Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport to four U.S. cities — New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Air Canada will offer four daily round-trip flights to New York LaGuardia starting in March 2026, it said in a Thursday news release. Then, over the summer, the airline says it will introduce three daily flights to Boston Logan, two to Chicago O’Hare and one to Washington Dulles.
Porter Airlines, headquartered at Billy Bishop, already services the four American cities. The new Air Canada routes mark an escalation in the emerging rivalry between Porter and the flag carrier.
In the face of the U.S. trade war, data shows many Canadians are choosing to shift their spending habits away from American products and travel, CBC’s J.P. Tasker reports.
The service expansion is made possible by the opening of U.S customs pre-clearance at the Toronto Island airport, said Roelof-Jan Steenstra, CEO of PortsToronto, Billy Bishop’s parent company, at a news conference Thursday.
The facility is expected to open “in the coming months,” Steenstra told reporters. Once the facility opens, passengers will be able to clear American customs before boarding and while still on Canadian soil.
The announcement comes at a time when Canadian travel to the U.S. is plummeting. According to Statistics Canada data from September, the number of Canadian residents returning from the U.S. by air declined 27.1 per cent from the same month last year.
Several airlines, including Air Canada, have reduced capacity for some U.S. routes — or suspended them altogether. And in September, the U.S. ambassador to Canada suggested Washington may need to reassess airport pre-clearance due to declining numbers.
In addition to the new U.S. routes, Air Canada announced Thursday that it will be increasing the frequency of two domestic routes, adding one daily flight to Montreal and two to Ottawa.
The new routes will use 78-seat De Havilland Dash 8-400 aircrafts, per the release.
