Extreme cold disrupted air travel across Canada on Jan. 24, 2026, with more than 20 per cent of the 900-plus flights at Toronto Pearson cancelled between Friday and Saturday and another 20 per cent delayed, as wind chills below -30 C slowed operations ahead of a major Sunday snowstorm.
An 11-hour flight, then a 10-hour wait
Guilherme Holtz and his family spent 11 hours flying from Rio de Janeiro to Toronto and were looking forward to getting home to Quebec City by Saturday morning. Instead, their 8 a.m. connecting flight was cancelled, and they were rebooked on a flight at 6 p.m.
“I’m hoping that it stays like that, there’s no more cancellations, and we can go home,” Holtz said in an interview at Pearson. “I am very tired and we just want to get home, but it’s 10 hours more to do all this whole trip. It’s very long.”
Holtz was far from alone. Bitter cold sweeping the country led to delays or cancellations at most of Canada’s major airports, and Pearson — the country’s busiest — posted some of the worst numbers: more than a fifth of its flights cancelled and another fifth delayed, according to the airport’s website.
Environment Canada said much of Ontario was facing a big freeze Saturday, with wind chill temperatures in Toronto and Ottawa dropping below -30 C. The frigid air was forecast to persist through the weekend and pair with significant snowfall of 15 to 30 centimetres in Toronto and southern Ontario on Sunday, with reduced visibility and gusts up to 50 kilometres an hour. From New Brunswick through to Alberta, residents hunkered down through a bone-chilling cold snap, with parts of the Prairies expected to reach lows of -55 C with the wind chill.
Airlines and airports brace for the storm
Toronto Pearson said on social media it was closely monitoring the winter storm and preparing to respond to snow Sunday morning. “Crews at our Airfield Maintenance Facility are ready for snow removal operations across the airfield, including runways, taxiways, and apron areas, with more than 100 pieces of equipment,” it said. The airport authority asked passengers to check flight status before heading out.
WestJet issued advisories covering airports in Halifax, Moncton and Quebec City, as well as U.S. destinations including Atlanta, Houston and New York City. Air Canada posted a notice that extreme cold at Toronto and Montreal airports was causing delays, and that customers could rebook at no cost.
A severe winter storm also caused widespread disruption across the United States, forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights, including some destined for Canada.
A second cancellation at 3 a.m.
For Scott Lang and his wife, the weekend became a travel odyssey. Air Canada had cancelled their direct flight to Cancun three days earlier and rescheduled them with a layover in Houston for Saturday morning. Then, at 3 a.m., a text from the airline said that flight, too, was cancelled because of severe weather in Houston.
Lang said he normally doesn’t check his messages overnight, but had heard about the weather. “I just happened to get up and check it and I saw the message. If I hadn’t seen it and we got up at eight o’clock this morning, I would have probably been in trouble.”
After frantic calls and website searches, he booked a WestJet flight for Sunday, then cancelled it when his wife found a direct Flair flight to Cancun for Saturday — shortly before Air Canada also told them it had found them another flight, which they then had to cancel. The couple received travel credits but want a full refund. “All I can say is at 3 o’clock in the morning, my only interest was getting on an airplane,” Lang said.
The weekend worsened from there: by Sunday, the snowstorm pushed Pearson’s cancellation rate above 60 per cent, and airlines spent days working through the backlog as the storm moved east.
