Airport hub · YYZ
Toronto Pearson handled 47.3 million passengers in 2025 (+1.1%), the busiest airport in Canada — and still 6% below its 2019 record as transborder weakness and delivery delays hold it back. The fix is already named: the LIFT infrastructure programme and a 2026 that is growing again.
The GTAA’s 2025 annual report (March 2026) is candid: 47.3 million passengers, up a modest 1.1%, with domestic growth (16.4→17.2 million) offset by a marginal decline in the international sector, where the ongoing softness of transborder travel to the United States bites hardest. The year absorbed an air-carrier labour disruption, extreme weather and a five-day runway closure from a single aircraft incident — and still grew.
The economics underneath are healthier than the traffic line: revenue rose 5.5% to $2.08 billion, EBITDA up 5.5% to $990 million at a 47.5% margin, net income up 11.2% to $366 million. Canada’s whole airport system moved 158.9 million passengers in 2025 (Statistics Canada, July 2026) — just below 2019 — and Pearson’s slice confirms the national pattern: domestic strength, international lag.
2026 is inflecting: Q2 2026 delivered 12.4 million passengers (+3.3%), revenue +8.8%, with FIFA World Cup operations absorbed smoothly. The long-term programme — LIFT, with new taxiways, a satellite concourse for transborder and cargo apron expansions — is the capacity answer for the decade ahead.
Pearson’s constraint is not infrastructure, appetite or airlines — it is the transborder relationship. US-bound travel has been the weak segment since 2024-25 policy turbulence, and every point of US share is worth roughly a million passengers at Pearson scale.
The TIO read: YYZ is a national-asset story priced by a bilateral relationship. Watch the transborder seat count and LIFT milestones; when Washington-Canada flows normalize, Pearson’s 2019 record — 50.5 million — is two growth years away.
Pearson is the series’ clearest policy-beta airport: a national gateway with a 6% gap to its record that has nothing to do with demand and everything to do with the border. The 2026 FIFA World Cup just proved the operational ceiling is high. The trade: watch transborder seat counts, not load factors — the recovery will be announced in airline schedules before it shows in any hotel report.
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