TORONTO — Airline data company Cirium has offered up an overview of data from Canada’s airline industry, just in time for the Canada Day long weekend.

Cirium’s report notes that Canada’s airlines – and Toronto Pearson International Airport – improved their on-time performance in the spring 2024, “which bodes well for summer 2024.” Among North American airlines, WestJet was third, and Air Canada sixth, for on-time performance in May 2024, according to Cirium’s stats.

So far this month the major Canadian carriers have also had comparatively high completion rates. Completion factor measures the number of flights flown compared to those scheduled. At this point, for June 2024, Porter Airlines had a 99.52% completion factor, Flair Airlines at 99.27%, WestJet at 98.58%, and Air Canada posted 97% – and Cirium notes that the latter is operating a significantly higher number of flights.

Meanwhile it appears Toronto Pearson Airport has risen above its pandemic-era challenges, demonstrating consistent and improved departure performance in 2024 to date (and even in the winter months in early 2024). Toronto Pearson’s D14% – the percentage of flights scheduled that departed within 14:59 of the scheduled departure time – consistently averaged around 70% in the first half of 2024 and into late June 2024. Last June, Pearson’s D14% was around 59%.

In May 2024, Toronto-Pearson had 70.96% of its flights depart on time, on around 14,500 flights. By way of comparison, the best performing U.S. airport in May 2024 was Salt Lake City, with 82.69% of flights departing on-time departure on around 10,000 flights, and the best performing Canadian airport, Calgary International Airport, had a D14% of 77.07% on around 6,000 flights.

What about airfare? Cirium’s FM-Traffic data tool estimates airfares, with dozens of sources of data. According to its metrics, comparing March 2023 to March 2024, economy airfare has increased from $167 to $195, a 17% increase. “However, note that … in real terms (compared to a basket of other goods, i.e. adjusted for inflation) Canadian airfare will have increased by a smaller amount,” says Cirium.

Drilling down to transatlantic airfare from Canada to Europe, Cirium’s FM-Traffic data from March 2024 vs. March 2023 shows fares are stable at around US$384, with no increase year over year.

Cirium’s website can be found here.