Florida tourism set a new record last year, welcoming 143.3 million visitors, according to data released by Visit Florida. That represents an increase of 0.2% over 2024 and represents the highest yearly total in state history. Domestic tourism represented nearly 92% of all visitors. Overseas visits were up 4%, with almost 9.3 million visits. But visits from Canada were down a substantial 14.7%, reaching roughly 2.9 million for the year. Visit Florida, which markets the Sunshine State to the world, says it’s engaging in talks with Canadian travel groups in an effort to change that. But it may not be Read more
La Guardia Airport
Winter Storms Wreaking Havoc on Travel in Eastern USA and Canada; More Than 15,000 Flights Cancelled
Winter storms across wide swatches of the eastern United States and Canada, as well as a bone-chilling polar vortex, have sparked one of the worst travel weekends in recent history. More than 10,000 flights in and out of the United States had been cancelled for today (Sunday, Jan. 25) as of 9 a.m. ET. If you figure only 100 people per flight, that’s a million passengers left stranded on a single day. More than 4,000 flights in the US were cancelled on Saturday, and nearly 2,000 have already been kyboshed for tomorrow (Monday). There are reports of major power outages Read more
J.D. Power’s latest study of U.S. and Canadian airports is pretty harsh when it comes to Canada. If you take this study at its word, we suck. We truly suck. But I don’t know if that’s quite true. The company’s annual airport review for 2024 ranks Toronto Pearson/YYZ as the second-worst mega airport in the two countries, ahead of only poor Newark-Liberty in New Jersey. J.D.Power ranked Vancouver International 15th out of 27 large airports, which is at least middle of the pack. But Calgary was 22nd and Montreal-Trudeau next-to-last at 26th. The 2024 North America Airport Satisfaction Study, the Read more
Muscat, Oman has the world’s best airport, Minneapolis is best in the U.S., and Calgary is tops in Canada, a new study from AirHelp says. The company ranked 200 world airports for on-time performance, customer opinion (based on surveys) and food + drink, then issued a final score. AirHelp puts on-time performance as the main component, worth a full 60% of an airport’s final score. A score of 8.5 indicates 85% of flights arrived on time. They count a plane as on time if it arrives within 15 minutes of its scheduled arrival. Customer opinion (they were asked about wait Read more
As Rosanne Roseannadanna liked to say on the old Saturday Night Live skits, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” The airline industry in the past six months has battled freak snowstorms. They’ve had mysterious computer issues. I seem to recall a plague of locusts in Nebraska, but I could be wrong. Anyway, now comes something else: wildfire smoke. Cancellations didn’t seem too bad, but major airports in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States suffered thousands of delays on Wednesday as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south. At one point, the Federal Aviation Administration in the U.S. called a Read more
