Air Transat has quietly scrapped its Toronto–Berlin seasonal route for summer 2027, cutting Germany's capital from its schedule just two years after launching the service. The roughly nine-hour hop on an Airbus A321LR — around 4,050 miles with a westbound flight time of eight hours and 50 minutes — was set to return on May 1, 2027, running twice weekly and ramping up to three weekly through early October. It won't happen, and the Canadian leisure airline now has no German destinations at all.
It's a quick exit from a market Air Transat only re-entered in June 2025 after 11 years away. The carrier once flew to Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Munich, but its last Frankfurt service ended in 2014. Berliners do still have one Canadian link: Air Canada resumed nonstop flights from Montréal this year. Toronto travellers, though, lose their only nonstop option to the German capital.
Berlin isn't the only casualty. Ottawa–London Gatwick and Montréal–Reykjavík have also vanished from the 2027 schedule — the Reykjavík route launched in 2026 and is being dropped after a single season. Together, the three cuts show how hard it is to make thin transatlantic routes pay, even with small, fuel-efficient narrowbodies.
The good news: Air Transat is adding five new European routes from June 2027, and several are genuinely useful for travellers outside the big hubs. Quebec City gets weekly nonstops to Lyon (June 8) and Barcelona (June 14) — the latter the city's first direct Spanish link, joining existing service to Paris, Marseille and Nantes. Montréal picks up Faro in the Algarve (weekly from June 14) and Geneva (twice weekly from June 19). Toronto gains a twice-weekly Birmingham service from June 22, a fourth UK gateway for the city. Geneva and Birmingham are brand-new destinations for the airline, while Lyon, Barcelona and Faro are expansions.
There's also a bigger shift on the horizon. Air Transat is leasing four Airbus A321XLRs from Air Lease Corporation, arriving across 2027 and 2028, with a range of about 4,700 nautical miles — 17% more than its current narrowbodies. That opens the door to longer or thinner routes that currently don't work: think Mediterranean leisure spots like Ibiza, or cities such as Dubrovnik and Catania. Nothing is announced yet, but the airline's existing quirky routes to Agadir, Nantes and Porto suggest its future European map could get a lot more interesting than another major capital.
For Canadian travellers, the takeaway is mixed. If Berlin or Reykjavík were on your list for 2027, you'll need a connection — or Air Canada's Montréal flight in Berlin's case. But if you're in Quebec City, Ottawa's orbit or southern Ontario, the new direct links to the Rhône, Catalonia, the Algarve and the English Midlands could save you a detour through a mega-hub. Watch the XLR announcements too; they're likely to be the routes that actually make headlines.
