Toronto Pearson is about to get a whole lot more international. Air Canada, which already handles more than half of the airport's passengers, is rolling out eight new routes from its biggest hub — five starting this winter and three more next summer.
The first to land is Tenerife in the Canary Islands, launching October 25 with twice-weekly flights on the airline's 182-seat Airbus A321XLR, a narrow-body jet with 14 fully flat Signature Class suites and 168 economy seats. It's a notable first: until now, no North American airline has flown to the Canary Islands. Air Transat will break that exclusivity in December with its own Toronto service to Las Palmas, so sun-seeking Canadians will soon have options.
Latin America follows quickly. Merida, Mexico gets twice-weekly A220-300 flights from November 21, then Guatemala City (December 1, weekly on an A330-300), Quito, Ecuador (December 5, weekly on a 787-9) and Roatan, Honduras (December 13, weekly via Air Canada Rouge's 737 MAX 8). It's a strong haul for anyone chasing winter sun or Central American culture without connecting through a US hub.
Summer 2027 brings the European expansion. Oslo launches June 2 with four weekly A321XLR flights (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays), Shannon follows on June 10 with three weekly rotations on the same aircraft type, and Nice on the French Riviera starts June 16, twice weekly on a widebody A330-300.
The A321XLR is the quiet story behind much of this. Air Canada took its first example in April 2026 and has been using it for exactly the kind of routes the aircraft was built for — destinations like Toulouse, Lyon, Nantes, Porto and Berlin that don't fill a widebody but are too far for a standard narrow-body. Shannon and Oslo fit that mould neatly.
Context for the scale of all this: Air Canada and its regional partners are scheduled to operate over 36,000 flights at Toronto Pearson this winter (October 25 to March 27), a 10% capacity increase network-wide. The airline alone accounts for roughly 11,600 flights and 2.4 million seats at the hub in the final quarter of 2026. Multiple daily departures connect Toronto to major US hubs including New York LaGuardia, Newark, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington Reagan.
For travellers, the practical upshot is real. Tenerife means a genuinely off-the-beaten-path winter sun option from Canada, Quito puts the Galápagos gateway within one stop of Toronto, and Shannon offers a relaxed, cheaper alternative to Dublin for western Ireland. Book early for the once- or twice-weekly routes — thin frequencies on new services tend to sell fast around school holidays.
Story via Simple Flying.
