Canadians Are Trading Florida for Mexico This Winter

For years, the Canadian winter escape followed a familiar script: Florida, Arizona, a few nights in Las Vegas. That script is changing, and the airlines have noticed before most travellers have.

According to aviation data firm OAG, Canadian airlines cut their US-bound capacity by nearly 10% in the first quarter of 2026 — about 450,000 seats, or close to 5,000 seats a day. More than 95% of those cuts came from Canadian carriers themselves. WestJet trimmed its US flying by 19%, Air Canada by 7%, and Flair by 58%. The classic snowbird destinations felt it most: Las Vegas lost about 82,000 seats over three months, Orlando about 79,000, with Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, and Fort Myers also down.

The seats did not just disappear — they moved. Capacity to Costa Rica jumped 14% and Mexico grew 5%, with WestJet adding 40% more capacity to Mexico than the year before.

Statistics Canada's travel numbers tell the same story from the other side. Canadians returned from 2.1 million US trips in January 2026, down 22% from a year earlier — the 13th straight month of decline. Trips to countries other than the US rose 10.6%. And the gap with the years before the trade tensions is still wide: in February 2026, combined air and car trips back from the US were 31.5% below February 2024.

Mexico is now the number one overseas destination for Canadians. About 1.3 million Canadian visits in the first quarter of 2026, well ahead of the Dominican Republic at roughly 441,000. Canadians have even overtaken Americans as the top international visitors to Mexico's Caribbean coast, and traffic on the busy Montreal–Cancun route climbed 24%. Overall, Canadians spent about $10.1 billion overseas in that period, up 16.7%.

This winter's schedules lock the shift in. WestJet dropped 10 more US routes for winter 2026/27 — including Vancouver flights to Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Lihue, and Orlando — while running its biggest sun schedule ever: up to 1,252 weekly flights on 88 non-stop routes. Porter plans nearly 5,000 sun flights this winter, more than 150% above last season, and Air Transat is adding flights from Montreal to Aruba, Barbados, and Los Cabos.

What this means if you're thinking about Puerto Vallarta

Most of the headlines are about the Caribbean coast, but the same airlines and the same Canadian travellers are the ones who have been coming to the Pacific coast for years. Puerto Vallarta has been welcoming Canadian snowbirds for a long time, and this shift plays directly to that: more seats to Mexico, more Canadians choosing Mexico over the US, and more of them discovering that a winter home here is within reach.

And the airlines are putting seats behind it for this winter. WestJet has added 56 flights a month into Puerto Vallarta for winter 2026/27 — Winnipeg service doubled from six to twelve flights a week, Edmonton up from thirteen to seventeen, with more from Regina, Saskatoon, and Kelowna. Air Canada added a new Calgary–Puerto Vallarta route, three times a week from December 10 to April 10, and doubled its summer Vancouver service from once to twice a week. Porter added Edmonton–Puerto Vallarta three times a week from November 3 and moved Toronto to daily service.

If you've been watching the flight options and the headlines and wondering whether you're early or late to this, you're not early to something unproven — you're part of a shift that's already well underway.

If you're thinking about a place of your own in Puerto Vallarta, I'd be glad to talk through what the market looks like right now — the numbers, the neighbourhoods, and what actually sells.

Your Life, Elevated

Nik Valcic

MexHome Real Estate, Puerto Vallarta

+52 322 274 7775 (Mexico) | +1 360 861 0715 (US / Canada)