Halifax Loses Three Transatlantic Routes as WestJet Drops Copenhagen and Madrid and Icelandair Ends Reykjavik Service
Why It MattersCuts to routes only launched in 2026 show how thin secondary-airport transatlantic flying is when fuel costs rise and local demand has to carry flights that hubs fill with connecting passengers.
What happened
Halifax Stanfield International Airport (YHZ) is set to lose three transatlantic routes even though it handled a record 4,140,668 passengers in 2025, up 4% from 3,979,785 in 2024. International passengers rose 19.3%, from 441,053 to 526,352. The airport had promoted a 2026 schedule of 57 non-stop year-round and seasonal services, including a record 15 European destinations.
WestJet has removed Halifax (YHZ) - Copenhagen (CPH) and Halifax (YHZ) - Madrid (MAD) from its Summer 2027 schedule, after launching both routes in 2026. Madrid began on May 15, 2026 and Copenhagen on May 28, 2026, each as a four-times-weekly summer service flown with Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft. Copenhagen was scheduled through September 27 and Madrid through October 12. WestJet's schedule changes made both routes unavailable for reservation in September 2026, and neither appears in its Summer 2027 plans.
Icelandair will end its Halifax (YHZ) - Reykjavik (KEF) service after October 18, 2026. That service runs twice weekly from June 4 through October 18, 2026. WestJet alone served nine European destinations from Halifax in summer 2026; besides Copenhagen and Madrid, it also flies the airport from Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin, Edinburgh, London Gatwick, Lisbon and Paris.
WestJet is making a similar adjustment at Toronto Pearson (YYZ), cancelling planned 2027 Toronto (YYZ) - Glasgow (GLA) service, which it had resumed in 2026 with four weekly flights from May 15. It is consolidating its Scottish flying around Edinburgh (EDI), which leaves Air Transat as the sole Toronto-Glasgow operator, using the Airbus A321LR.
What is staying at Halifax
Halifax retains substantial European connectivity. Air Canada operates year-round London Heathrow service and added Halifax (YHZ) - Brussels (BRU) for summer 2026. Air Canada, WestJet and Discover Airlines continue to serve European markets from the airport.
WestJet's 2026 operation included four weekly flights to Dublin, three weekly to London Gatwick and three weekly to Edinburgh.
Industry impact & what to watch
Reporting on the cancellations points to elevated aviation fuel costs as the pressure behind them. Higher fuel costs weigh hardest on marginal transatlantic routes at secondary airports. Those routes depend more on local origin-and-destination demand than hubs do, because a hub can combine connecting passengers from many feeder flights to fill the same aircraft.
The Halifax cuts show that record passenger totals do not protect individual routes. A route that is new, seasonal and flown a few times a week is cheap to add and equally cheap to remove, and WestJet's decision to drop two routes it launched months earlier fits that logic. The same carrier trimming Glasgow from Toronto while keeping Edinburgh suggests it is concentrating capacity where it expects the strongest demand in each market.
The next signals are the carriers' own: whether WestJet's Summer 2027 plans for the Halifax services it is keeping hold, and whether Icelandair or another operator announces replacement capacity to Reykjavik or other northern European points.
