by Jen Mallia
Last updated: 12:20 PM ET, Thu May 29, 2025
While 2024 may feel like a million years ago in the travel business, it only ended less than six months ago. In that time, Statistics Canada compiled the Q4 financial reports of the 24 largest airlines in Canada and released its report yesterday, May 28, 2025.
The report indicates operating revenue was up eight percent compared to revenue in the last quarter of 2023. When looking at the whole year, the 24 largest Canadian air carriers earned $35.2 billion in operating revenue in 2024, which was up 5.6 percent from 2023 and up 33.1 percent compared to pre-pandemic 2019.
Revenue from passengers dwarfed cargo revenue at $7.4 billion from passenger revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024, while air cargo generated $672.2 million in revenue.
Where the Money Goes
It’s not just revenue that went up, operating expenses also increased in 2024. Total operating expenses were $8.7 billion in the fourth quarter, 12.2 percent higher than in the fourth quarter of 2023 and 37.4 percent higher than in the same quarter of 2019.
Wondering what all that money went towards? “Other operating expenses,” such as depreciation and maintenance, accounted for the largest share (55.8 percent) of total operating expenses in the fourth quarter of 2024, followed by wages, salaries and benefits (23.1 percent) and turbo fuel (21.2 percent).
Passenger Numbers Up
Passenger load showed modest gains in the last quarter of 2024 compared with the previous year and with 2019.The 24 largest Canadian air carriers transported 21.8 million passengers in the fourth quarter, (21.3 million on scheduled flights and 502,000 on chartered flights.) That’s an increase of 3.6 percent from the same quarter in 2023, and a one percent bump over the pre-pandemic level reported in the same quarter in 2019.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, there were 10.5 million passengers on domestic routes and 11.3 million passengers on international routes. Among the international passengers, 5.2 million had taken transborder flights (between Canada and the United States) and 6.1 million were carried on other international flights. It will be very interesting to see how those numbers shift amid economic and political tensions that have seen a big drop in Canadians travelling to the U.S. so far in 2025.
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