Canadian flights to the U.S. are falling every month, and the politics are showing

Canadian passenger flights to the United States have been sliding for more than a year, and the decline has only deepened under Washington’s trade war and annexation talk. New monthly data on Canadian-resident arrivals by air to the United States from the U.S. International Trade Administration’s I-94 program show negative year-over-year growth every single month of 2025 so far, with declines ranging from about 8 to 17 percent through August.

Statistics Canada’s Frontier Counts program reports that overall Canadian trips to the United States totaled about 39 million in 2024, up modestly from 2023 but still below pre-pandemic levels. That picture changed sharply this year. Each month, the data shows a year-over-year decline in visitors from the Northern border.

The air segment tells a stark story. Official data from the International Trade Administration’s I-94 visitor program show that Canadian-resident arrivals to the United States by air have posted negative year-over-year growth since late 2023. In 2025, the I-94 monthly arrivals file for Canada (air only) records steady declines in the high single digits early in the year, followed by low-to-mid teens percentage drops from April through August.

In August alone, that I-94 breakdown finds that Canadian-resident arrivals by air fell about 15 percent from the previous year, even as other international segments showed more resilience. Airlines and tourism analysts describe a clear step down in Canadian demand for U.S. flights.

And initial reports for September and October don’t look any better. Statistics Canada reports a 10.5% decline in transborder passengers to the United States for September 2025 and a decline of 8.9% for October 2025.

For people who live in spreadsheets, the shift shows up clearly in the monthly numbers. It is possible to pull Statistics Canada’s Frontier Counts into Google Sheets using the IMPORTXML function and chart how Canadian-resident return trips by air to the United States flatten out in late 2024 before dropping sharply in early 2025. Once the data are in place, a simple FORECAST function can project how far transborder air travel might fall if current policies and rhetoric stay in place.

Some Canadians are already baking these questions into their personal planning. A family debating whether to keep an annual Florida trip on the calendar can plug the new cost, exchange rate, and perceived risk into a trip-planning spreadsheet.

And air travel is only part of the story. For anyone near the border, car crossings are still common. So a detailed mileage log could help track costs during international trips to or from Canada.

Those tools will not resolve the underlying politics, but they make it easier to quantify what is at stake when a holiday flight now comes bundled with the possibility of secondary screening, aggressive questioning, or contact with an enforcement system that many see as increasingly hostile.

Travel has always been a quiet barometer of the relationship between Canada and the United States. The latest air passenger numbers suggest major warning signs. Tariffs and annexation talk have clearly damaged goodwill, and the rise of highly visible ICE operations and anti-immigrant laws gives Canadians another reason to stay away.