The approach of a new travel season has brought a few changes to flights servicing the Ottawa International Airport.
On Wednesday, Porter Airlines said it will not resume flying between Ottawa and Las Vegas this winter.
Earlier this year, the company announced that it would extend service on its non-stop route to Las Vegas to fly passengers year-round. At that time, senior communications manager Robyn van Teunenbroek said “positive bookings” on the route had prompted the decision.
(Sponsored)
Inspired by love and loss, donor Tom Moore triples Giving Tuesday donations
For Tom Moore, a retired tech executive and longtime Ottawa resident, giving back to The Ottawa Hospital isn’t just a gesture of generosity. It’s personal. Tom grew up on a
Inspired by love and loss, donor Tom Moore triples Giving Tuesday donations
For Tom Moore, a retired tech executive and longtime Ottawa resident, giving back to The Ottawa Hospital isn’t just a gesture of generosity. It’s personal. Tom grew up on a
But this past June, the route was grounded indefinitely. Porter Airlines told OBJ in an email on Wednesday that there are no official plans to resume service in the coming months.
“A decision was made that YOW-LAS will not return to this year’s winter schedule, but we are considering other possibilities for Ottawa that will be determined in the coming weeks,” van Teunenbroek said in the email. “We’ll have more to share soon.”
As the summer tourism season comes to an end, other airlines are adjusting their operations.
Air Canada is suspending its direct flight from Ottawa to London’s Heathrow International Airport, which returned this past spring for the first time since the pandemic.
The Ottawa-London route was restarted in March, operating four times weekly with the company’s Dreamliner fleet.
The airline had announced the route’s comeback in August 2024, stating that it would operate the flight seasonally from the spring into early fall to meet summer tourism demands.
This year, service on that route will end Oct. 25 and resume on March 30, 2026, according to a spokesperson for the airline.
In an email to OBJ Wednesday, an Air Canada spokesperson said, “When we announced in August 2024 (that) the service would start this year, we did say at the time the route would be operated seasonally. Temporarily suspending the service during winter was always part of the plan. This summer was the first time we operated the route since before COVID.”
With the summer season coming to a close, passenger volumes are expected to slow. Like Air Canada, other airlines are decreasing capacity for the off-season. Air France, for example, will cut back on its Ottawa-Paris route for the winter.
Though the Paris flight won’t operate as frequently, Krista Kealey, vice-president of communications for the Ottawa International Airport Authority, said in an email Wednesday that it will continue to provide an option for Ottawa passengers wanting to travel to Europe while the London flight is dormant.
She added that while demand for some destinations slows in the colder months, other destinations become more popular.
“Demand for air service to Europe is lighter in the winter, whereas demand for sunshine destinations increases significantly,” she wrote. “Air Canada has responded accordingly, launching their winter schedule with a new destination, Nassau in the Bahamas, as well as favourites in Florida, Mexico, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. We will look forward to welcoming the LHR flight back next spring.”
It’s been a relatively stable year for the Ottawa International Airport, which reported earlier this summer that the number of monthly passengers in June surpassed 400,000 for the first time since 2019.
Both domestic and international travel contributed to that growth. The airport saw 352,161 domestic passengers, compared to 330,966 in June 2024, and 24,899 international passengers, compared to 16,244 the previous year.
