AI Analysis: Domestic and international itinerant movements, by geography, airports with NAV CANADA services and other selected airports, monthly

Executive Summary

Canadian airport itinerant movements show strong post-pandemic recovery from January 2022 to December 2025, with transborder and international movements growing 70.5% and 80.6% respectively, while domestic movements remain dominant but have declined from their peak of 371,486 to 198,125 monthly movements. The data is heavily right-skewed — a median of just 1,253 versus a mean of 12,668 — confirming that a small number of major hubs like Toronto and Vancouver drive the bulk of national traffic. All movement categories are tightly correlated (r = 0.908 to 0.999), indicating that airport activity rises and falls together across the network.

Key Findings

• Domestic movements are the largest category, peaking at 371,486 monthly movements before declining to a current level of 198,125 — a significant drop likely reflecting post-pandemic normalization and seasonal effects.
• Transborder (US-Canada) movements grew 70.5% over the dataset period, reaching 32,086 monthly movements, while Other International movements posted the strongest relative growth at 80.6%, reaching 20,174 per month.
• The dataset is heavily right-skewed, with a mean of 12,668 but a median of only 1,253 movements, and an IQR of 6,848 — confirming that most airports handle modest traffic while a handful of major hubs dominate national volumes.
• All three movement types are very strongly correlated, with Domestic and Total movements nearly perfectly aligned (r = 0.999), and even the weakest pairing — Domestic vs. Other International — showing a strong correlation of r = 0.908.
• Only 4 statistical outliers were detected across the entire dataset using the IQR method, all occurring in the Transborder movements category, suggesting domestic and international movements remained within expected seasonal bounds throughout the period.
• The dataset spans 14 geographic regions and 3 airport categories, covering 48 monthly periods, with movement counts ranging from as low as 1 to a maximum of 371,486 — reflecting the vast disparity in scale between Canada's smallest and largest airports.
• NAV CANADA-serviced airports consistently account for the largest share of itinerant movements compared to non-NAV CANADA airports, highlighting the concentration of Canadian aviation activity at major serviced facilities.