There might be a lot of empty seats on flights from Canada to the US this summer. Canadians have been canceling trips south of the border amid the trade war and President Trump's repeated remarks about making their country the 51st state, and flight bookings have "collapsed," according to aviation analytics company OAG. The company says bookings for travel through September are down around 70% compared to the same period last year. Airlines have cut capacity to the US, but by a relatively small amount compared to the drop in demand, with capacity down around 3.5% in the summer months when air travel between the two countries is normally at its peak.
The drop suggests Canadians are delaying travel or changing their plans because of the trade dispute and the high-profile detentions of some Canadian citizens by ICE, the Guardian reports. Airlines that have cut capacity to the US have added flights to Europe, with WestJet adding 114 flights to destinations including Dublin and Edinburgh since early March, according to OAG.
There has also been a steep drop in land crossings from the US to Canada, the CBC reported earlier this month. In October, November, December, and January, cross-border trips were up from the same period a year earlier, but in February, crossings abruptly dropped to lows not seen since the pandemic. Len Saunders, an immigration lawyer in Blaine, Washington, said the decline in day-trippers was evident there and in other border towns. "This is like COVID all over again," he told the CBC. "With the rhetoric coming from Trump—people just don't want to come down here." (More Canada stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
