Air Transat has quietly erased one of its longest transatlantic routes: the seasonal link between Montreal-Trudeau and Athens is gone from the 2027 schedule, and it won't be coming back. The roughly 10-hour flight, flown three times weekly with an Airbus A330-200, wrapped up its final 2026 season on October 17. Cirium schedule data shows no plans for a 2027 return, and the airline hasn't publicly explained why.
The route had a decent run. Air Transat first flew Montreal–Athens in 2006, kept it going until the pandemic, then revived it in 2022 after a two-year gap. Greek holidaymakers flying out of Quebec aren't entirely stranded — Air Canada runs its own seasonal Montreal–Athens service over the summer, so capacity on the route doesn't disappear entirely. Air Transat passengers can also connect through Toronto, where the airline keeps a three-times-weekly Athens flight on the same A330 equipment.
Athens isn't the only casualty. The carrier is also axing its Ottawa–London Gatwick service, an A321LR route that lasted just a single season (Air Canada continues serving London nonstop). Toronto–Berlin ends too, leaving that route with no other airline, and Montreal–Reykjavik-Keflavik has been dropped as well. All three were flown with the same narrowbody long-haul jet, which suggests the A321LR fleet is being redeployed rather than retired.
The cancellations coincide with a launch, not a retreat: Air Transat has just started flying nonstop to Istanbul, part of a broader shift of widebody capacity toward new Mediterranean and European destinations. Reporting via the BBC points to soaring jet fuel prices and rising operating costs pushing the airline to prune underperforming routes while protecting the ones with better returns. For a leisure carrier that sells sunshine and Europe as packaged holidays, that math makes sense even if it's annoying for anyone who liked the old timetable.
For travellers, the practical takeaway is this: Air Transat remains a solid option for summer flights from Canada to Europe and winter escapes to the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America — it has won Skytrax's World's Best Leisure Airline award multiple times since its 1986 founding. But its network is now narrower on the edges. Montreal travellers heading to Athens should plan around Air Canada's summer service or connect via Toronto; Ottawa passengers bound for London will lean on Air Canada; and Berlin or Reykjavik from Toronto or Montreal respectively now require other carriers or connections. If one of these routes mattered to your trip plans, book accordingly — and check schedules before assuming last year's options still exist.
