Air Canada soars to surprise location: New route set for lift-off this June
Air Canada Boeing 787-8 C-GHQQ departure.
Credit: Shutterstock, Robin Guess
Get your passports ready and pack those suitcases, because Air Canada is gearing up to whisk travellers between an iconic Portuguese city and Montreal with a brand-new route taking off on June 4. The airline, clearly not content with sitting on the tarmac, will lay on four weekly flights between Porto and Montreal right through until late September – it’s a summer fling to remember!
Canada is calling
Air Canada’s Sales Manager in Portugal, Raquel Serra Pinto, told Publituris that the airline is ‘optimistic about summer 2025 operations in Portugal and other EU markets’. And with good reason! Portugal is fast becoming a runaway hit for Canadians, who clearly can’t get enough of the sun, sea, and obscenely delicious pasteis de nata.
In fact, Canada was Portugal’s 10th biggest external market in overnight stays in 2023, with an eye-popping 2.7% share – the sort of figure that’ll have airline execs dancing in the aisles. Meanwhile, it ranks 9th in number of guests (3.3% share), proving that Portugal’s a top pick when Canadians fancy a holiday.
Adding routes faster than you can say ‘bag drop’
As well as the Porto-Montreal route, Air Canada’s also rolling out new services from Toronto to Naples and Toronto to Prague starting in May (three flights a week, for those needing an Italian or Czech fix). The airline’s already a dab hand at connecting Lisbon with Toronto and Montreal, and it boosted capacity in 2024 to keep pace with what Pinto calls ‘the significant demand for Portugal from the Canadian market’.
Past success, future take-off
No wonder everyone’s giddy: Canadian guests soared to 593.8 thousand in 2023, racking up a staggering 1,472.0 thousand overnight stays, up a whopping 56.9% on the previous year! If that’s not enough to make you poutine your holiday plans, we don’t know what is.
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