Intense cold causes flight delays, cancellations at Canadian airports

Guilherme Holtz and his family spent 11 hours on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Toronto and were looking forward to getting home to Quebec City by Saturday morning.

But their connecting flight scheduled for 8 a.m. was cancelled. He said the family was booked on another 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 Toronto Pearson International Airport.

“(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 wasn’t alone. Bitter cold weather sweeping the country led to flight delays or cancellations at most of Canada’s major airports.

More than 20 per cent of over 900 flights arriving and departing Pearson airport were cancelled between Friday and Saturday, according to the airport’s website. Another 20 per cent were delayed.

Environment Canada said much of Ontario was facing a big freeze Saturday, when wind chill temperatures in Toronto and Ottawa got below -30 C.

The frigid temperatures were to persist through the weekend and could be paired with significant snowfall of between 15 and 30 centimetres in Toronto and southern Ontario on Sunday. The weather agency warned of significant reduced visibility with strong gusts up to 50 kilometres per hour throughout the day.

The cold will let up at least slightly come Monday.

In a statement posted on social media, Toronto Person International Airport said it was closely monitoring the impact of the winter storm on its operations as it prepared 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 the status of their flights before heading to the airport.

WestJet had similar advisories that included airports in Halifax, Moncton and Quebec City, as well as south of the border in Atlanta, Houston and New York City.

From New Brunswick through to Alberta, residents have been hunkered down to wait out a bone-chilling cold snap. Parts of the Prairies were expected to reach lows of -55 C with the wind chill.

Air Canada said in a notice on its website that extreme cold at Toronto and Montreal airports was causing delays, and that customers could rebook at no cost.

A severe winter storm caused widespread disruption across the United States, forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights, including some destined for Canada.

The cancellations and delays impacted many southbound travellers including Scott Lang and his wife, who were waiting at the airport in Toronto for their flights to Cancun for a family get-together.

Lang said Air Canada cancelled the couple’s direct flight three days ago and then rescheduled it with one layover in Houston for Saturday morning.

But then he received another text from the airline at 3 a.m. that their flight had been cancelled for the second time due to severe weather in Houston.

Lang said he normally doesn’t check his text messages overnight, but he was worried after he 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.”

The next few hours were hectic. The couple started making frantic phone calls, checking different websites, hoping to find a flight.

He booked a WestJet flight for Sunday, which he cancelled after his wife found a direct Flair flight to Cancun for Saturday. Shortly after, Air Canada also told them it had found another flight for them which they had to cancel.

Air Canada and WestJet offered travel credits but the couple 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. “Over the next week or so or when we get back home, we may have a phone call with Air Canada and say, hey, you got to do something better.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 24, 2026.

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press