AI Analysis: Itinerant movements, by aircraft maximum take-off weight, at airports with NAV CANADA services and other selected airports, monthly

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 23100301 tracks 15.4 million itinerant aircraft movements across 127 NAV CANADA-serviced airports from January 2022 to December 2025, revealing that small general aviation aircraft (≤2,000 kg) dominate Canadian air traffic with nearly 4.9 million movements. The data is heavily right-skewed, with a handful of major hub airports driving disproportionately high volumes against a median of just 107 monthly movements per record. Strong and consistent seasonal cycles characterize the dataset, with summer peaks and winter troughs representing normal variation rather than anomalous events.

Key Findings

• The '2,000 kilograms and under' weight category dominates Canadian air traffic with 4,890,866 total movements — the largest share of all 10 weight classes tracked.
• The dataset is highly right-skewed: the mean of 1,106 movements is more than 10 times the median of 107, reflecting a small number of major airports generating outsized traffic volumes.
• Monthly itinerant movements peaked at 429,093 in July 2025 and bottomed at 200,691 in January 2022, with an average of approximately 321,648 movements per month across the full period.
• 50% of all records fall between just 29 and 320 movements (IQR of 291), confirming that the majority of Canadian airports handle modest, regional-scale traffic.
• The second most active weight category is '35,001 to 70,000 kilograms' with 2,509,447 total movements, representing mid-to-large commercial aircraft and the primary commercial aviation segment.
• No monthly totals exceeded a Z-score of ±2, indicating that seasonal variation — not sudden shocks or anomalies — is the dominant driver of fluctuation across the entire 48-month period.
• Individual monthly movement counts range from as low as 1 to a high of 156,913, a spread of 156,912, underscoring the vast disparity in scale between Canada's smallest and largest airports.