Eight international routes return to Tulum airport this winter after a year of cuts

Eight seasonal international routes return to Tulum airport this winter, restoring nonstop service from five cities in the United States and Canada to a terminal that lost flights in 2026.

United Airlines, Air Canada, Air Transat and WestJet will reactivate the routes across the winter 2026-2027 season, flying into Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport from Newark, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Calgary.

The timing carries weight because the airport enters its third full high season with the thinnest foreign schedule it has had since opening. Its international network had fallen from twelve routes to four by the middle of this year, and international arrivals dropped 34 percent in the first quarter against the same months of 2025. The eight returning routes do not restore what was lost. They do decide how much of the winter Tulum spends connected to the two markets that fill its hotels.

Air Canada arrives in October, United not until December

Air Canada moves first. Its Toronto service resumes on October 25, and Montreal follows on October 29, with both routes scheduled to run until the end of March 2027. That gives the carrier close to five months on the ground, the longest window in the group.

United takes the opposite approach. Its Newark flights operate from December 17 to January 24, a stretch of five and a half weeks built around the Christmas and New Year peak. When the holidays end, the route ends with them.

The remaining connections belong to Air Transat, which serves Tulum from Montreal and Quebec City, and to WestJet, which operates from Calgary and from its eastern Canadian bases. Start dates for those services were not included in the announcement.

Canada supplies four of the five cities

Only one returning market is American. Newark stands alone on the United States side of the list, while Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Calgary carry the rest of the winter's foreign traffic.

That concentration tracks what has held at Tulum and what has not. American carriers built the airport's opening year and then pulled back hard. Canadian leisure operators, which sell winter sun packages on fixed seasonal blocks, have kept returning. For the coming season, a large share of the Riviera Maya's northern air link runs through Canadian airports.

Four year-round US routes still sit outside this seasonal list. American Airlines flies from Dallas Fort Worth and Miami, Delta from Atlanta, and United from Houston.

Seasonal, not permanent

Every one of the eight routes carries an end date. Air Canada stops in late March, United in January, and the Air Transat and WestJet services follow the same winter pattern. None of them binds an airline to Tulum past the months when Canadians and Americans want a beach.

Tulum airport international routes fell from 12 to 4

The comeback is measured against a difficult year. Avianca, Copa Airlines, JetBlue and Volaris Costa Rica suspended their Tulum operations, and by May the airport was down to four foreign connections, every one of them to a US city.

The passenger numbers moved with the schedule. Tulum handled 1.24 million travelers in 2025, its first full calendar year, ranking 26th among Mexican airports. In the first quarter of 2026, international arrivals fell 34 percent year over year to roughly 178,000, and domestic traffic dropped about 25 percent. The terminal opened on December 1, 2023, and closed that first month with 39,768 passengers.

Sargassum, security and the cost of getting to the beach

Airlines did not leave for a single reason. Reporting on the retreat has attributed it to a cluster of them: security perception across the state, sargassum landings through the warm months, an oversupply of hotel rooms that dragged rates down, and the cost of ground transport between the terminal and the hotel zone.

That last factor is the one local operators can address before the first flight lands. The others belong to a longer argument about whether Tulum can hold scheduled international service outside the peak weeks, and this winter's eight routes will supply the next set of numbers for it.

The first test comes on October 25, when Air Canada's Toronto flight touches down. The shortest window belongs to United, whose Newark service ends on January 24, five and a half weeks after it starts.

Will eight seasonal routes be enough to fill Tulum's hotels this winter, or does the airport need year-round commitments? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.