AI Analysis: Screened passenger traffic at the largest airports in Canada

Executive Summary

Monthly screened passenger traffic at Canada's 8 largest airports collapsed by over 97% during COVID-19 — hitting a low of 123,575 passengers in April 2020 — before recovering to a record high of 5,935,640 in July 2025, representing a 3,633% rebound. The dataset (January 2019 to January 2026, 4,459 records) reveals Toronto Pearson and Vancouver as dominant traffic hubs, with all major traffic categories rising and falling in near-perfect unison (r ≥ 0.980). Seasonal summer peaks, a heavily right-skewed distribution, and pandemic-era structural breaks are the defining patterns across the 85-month period.

Key Findings

• Passenger traffic hit an all-time low of 123,575 in April 2020 due to COVID-19, then recovered to a dataset peak of 5,935,640 in July 2025 — a 3,633% increase from trough to peak.
• As of January 2026, monthly traffic stands at 4,613,099 passengers, confirming a sustained post-pandemic recovery well above pre-pandemic norms.
• The distribution of passenger counts is heavily right-skewed, with a mean of 408,354 versus a median of 136,942, driven by a small number of very high-volume airport-category combinations.
• Total Passengers and Total Screened Traffic are nearly perfectly correlated (r = 1.000), and Transborder sector passengers closely track overall volumes at r = 0.991, making it the single strongest sub-category driver.
• The Transborder and Other International sectors show the widest variability in the dataset, with minimum values near 1 and maximums exceeding 1.6 million, reflecting their greater sensitivity to external disruptions.
• Month-over-month percentage change analysis flagged early 2020 as the most extreme anomaly period, with drops likely exceeding 70–90% in some months, followed by unusually large positive rebounds in 2021–2022 driven by pent-up demand.
• Consistent seasonal patterns are visible throughout the dataset, with summer months reliably producing the highest traffic volumes across all airports and categories.