Canada’s busiest airport in November of 2020 was Kitchener-Waterloo and two others that don’t normally occupy those spots, Boundary Bay and Abbotsford, were in second and third respectively. Statistics Canada said there were 13,619 takeoffs and landings at Kitchener-Waterloo in November while the B.C. airports recorded 12,773 and 12,307 respectively. Perennial traffic leader Pearson International was in seventh spot and was edged by Vancouver in sixth spot. They were the only two major airports to crack the top ten.
All of the other eight leading airports have large flight schools and training traffic accounted for about 90 percent of the totals. Overall traffic was down more than 30 percent across the board and international flights were off by more than 80 percent. “There were 318,388 take-offs and landings at the 90 Canadian airports with NAV CANADA air traffic control towers and flight service stations, compared with 433,748 in November 2019,” StatsCan said. “Itinerant movements (flights from one airport to another) declined 38.5 percent year over year to 181,428 in November, while local movements (flights that remain in the vicinity of the airport) were down 1.4 percent to 136,960.”