Halifax Stanfield International Airport is about to lose three of its transatlantic links, only months after posting the busiest year in its history. WestJet has removed its Halifax–Copenhagen and Halifax–Madrid routes from its summer 2027 schedule, and Icelandair's last scheduled Halifax–Reykjavík flight operates on October 18, 2026, with no return planned for next summer.
The cuts, detailed by Bolt Flight on October 15, come against a backdrop of strong demand. Halifax handled a record 4,140,668 passengers in 2025, up 4% from 3,979,785 a year earlier. International traffic grew much faster, rising 19.3% from 441,053 to 526,352 passengers.
WestJet's one-summer experiments
For summer 2026, Halifax prepared for a record 15 nonstop European services within a network of 57 year-round and seasonal routes. WestJet alone planned nine European destinations from the airport: Dublin, Edinburgh, London Gatwick, Copenhagen, Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
Copenhagen and Madrid were the newest of those bets. Halifax–Madrid launched on May 15, 2026, and Halifax–Copenhagen followed on May 28, both as four-times-weekly summer services with the Boeing 737 MAX 8. Copenhagen was scheduled to run until September 27 and Madrid until October 12.
By September 2026, however, WestJet's schedule changes had made both routes unavailable for booking, and neither appears in its summer 2027 plans. They were given roughly one season to prove themselves before being dropped.
WestJet is making a similar adjustment in Toronto, where its planned 2027 service to Glasgow has been cancelled. The airline had returned to Toronto–Glasgow in 2026 with four weekly flights from May 15, and will now concentrate its Scottish flying on Edinburgh. That leaves Air Transat, which uses the Airbus A321LR, as the only operator between Toronto Pearson and Glasgow.
Icelandair ends its Halifax comeback
Icelandair restored Halifax to its network in 2024 after an absence dating back to 2018, initially with three weekly flights between May 31 and October 14 using the 160-seat Boeing 737 MAX 8. For 2026 it cut the route to two weekly flights, on Thursdays and Sundays, from June 4 to October 18.
Icelandair's 2026–27 destination calendar lists no 2027 restart date for Halifax, while other seasonal North American points such as Pittsburgh, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Nashville have specified resumptions, according to FlyMag. The route had offered more than a link to Iceland, since Keflavík also works as a connecting point to Scandinavia and continental Europe.
Fuel costs squeeze thinner routes
The common factor in reporting on the cuts is the high price of jet fuel. When fuel is expensive, the load factor needed to break even rises, and routes that rely mainly on local demand from a mid-sized city are more exposed than flights from large hubs, which can fill seats with connecting passengers from many origins.
The losses do not leave Halifax without European service. Air Canada keeps its year-round London Heathrow flight and added Halifax–Brussels for summer 2026. WestJet continues seasonal flights to Amsterdam, Dublin, Edinburgh, London Gatwick, Lisbon and Paris Charles de Gaulle, Discover Airlines serves Frankfurt and Edelweiss serves Zurich.
For travellers, though, Copenhagen, Madrid and Reykjavík will again require a connection, usually through Toronto, Montreal or a European hub. For the airport, the challenge as airlines enter the 2027 planning cycle is turning record overall traffic into routes that individual carriers can make profitable on their own.
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