Travellers in Atlantic Canada just lost a rare direct link to continental Europe. Air Canada has quietly removed its Halifax–Brussels service from the summer 2027 schedule, less than a year after launching it — and Halifax is losing other transatlantic routes too.
The route only started in June 2026, when Air Canada became the first airline ever to connect the two cities nonstop. It ran three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday outbound) on a Boeing 737 MAX 8, covering roughly 3,074 miles with a block time of just over seven hours each way. That made it one of the longest routes the aircraft type flew for the carrier. Thirty-five departures had been planned for summer 2027, initially set to transfer to Air Canada's leisure arm, Rouge, from June 17. All have now been deleted from the schedule.
Air Canada hasn't explained the cut, but it's not a disaster for Brussels-bound travellers: the airline still flies year-round daily from Montréal to Brussels, plus four flights weekly from Toronto in summer. And it fits a pattern. WestJet is dropping its Halifax routes to Copenhagen and Madrid for 2027 — routes that only launched in May 2025. The problem there was telling: those flights weren't really carrying people between Halifax and Europe. Around 62% of Copenhagen passengers were using Halifax as a stopover to reach Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver, and about 67% of Madrid passengers connected through the city too. Weak beyond-Scandinavia traffic on the SAS codeshare didn't help. Icelandair has also pulled its Halifax–Reykjavík service, which it had only resumed in 2024 after successive capacity cuts.
Halifax's transatlantic map for summer 2027 still looks decent, though. Air Canada keeps the London Heathrow route, while Discover Airlines flies to Frankfurt, Edelweiss to Zurich, and WestJet to Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Dublin, Edinburgh, London Gatwick and Lisbon. That's a solid spread for a city of its size.
The Brussels cancellation also ties into a bigger shake-up at Air Canada. Montréal–Reykjavík and Toronto–Ponta Delgada will still move to Rouge next summer, joining Rouge's existing Toronto–Reykjavík flights — the only European services the airline plans to operate with MAX 8s. Overall, though, Air Canada's European capacity will actually grow in summer 2027 versus 2026, as it shifts 45 MAX 8s from mainline to Rouge, retires Rouge's older A319s, and hands its newer A320 and A321 aircraft to the mainline fleet.
For travellers, the takeaway is simple: if you were eyeing that direct Halifax–Brussels flight — a genuinely handy option for visiting Belgium or connecting onward in Europe — you'll now need to route via Montréal, Toronto, or one of the remaining European gateways. And book Halifax's other direct European routes with confidence: airlines trimming unprofitable experiments doesn't change the fact that the city keeps strong year-on-year links to the continent.
