Twelve departures are the entire Newark season at Tulum's airport this winter

Tulum airport flights will connect five international cities this winter season, four of them in Canada. The only route to the United States, United's Newark service, runs 39 days.

Mexico's federal tourism ministry published the schedule on September 13. Air Canada, Air Transat, WestJet, and United Airlines will operate seven services to the Felipe Carrillo Puerto terminal, adding up to 10 weekly frequencies. Four of those seven services operate a single flight each week.

The timing is what gives the announcement weight. Coastal hotels are reporting occupancy below 20 percent, according to the local hotel association; the terminal lost most of its international network during the first half of the year, and the season these aircraft serve is the one the industry here has been counting on since May.

Air Transat and Air Canada open the season on October 25

All five routes are already on sale on the airlines' own platforms, according to the ministry. The season on paper starts with two Sunday arrivals and ends nearly six months later.

• Montreal: Air Canada on Thursdays, October 29, 2026 to April 8, 2027. Air Transat on Sundays, October 25 to April 18.
• Toronto: Air Canada on Sundays, October 25 to April 11. WestJet on Thursdays and Saturdays, October 31 to April 24.
• Calgary: WestJet on Thursdays and Saturdays, from October 29.
• Quebec City: Air Transat on Sundays, from October 25.
• Newark: United Airlines on Thursdays and Sundays, December 17 to January 24.

No closing date was given for Calgary or Quebec City. The rest of the calendar runs from October 25, when Air Transat lands from Montreal and Air Canada from Toronto, to April 24, when WestJet flies its last Saturday service back to Toronto.

Josefina Rodríguez Zamora, the federal tourism secretary, tied the routes to a broader push by the Sheinbaum administration to improve access, mobility, and service quality in Tulum. "Air connectivity is a fundamental element in continuing to strengthen tourism," she said in a statement translated from Spanish.

Twelve departures is the whole Newark season

United's route is the only one in the package that touches the United States, and it is also the shortest. It begins on Thursday, December 17, and ends on Sunday, January 24. That is 39 days at two flights a week, which works out to 12 departures in each direction for the entire winter.

The window covers Christmas, New Year, and three weeks of January. It shuts three months before the last Canadian aircraft leaves in April.

The Tulum airport flights still running are all American

The seasonal routes land on top of a network that thinned badly this year. The terminal served 12 international destinations in 2024. By May it had four, all of them in the United States: Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Miami, flown by American Airlines, Delta, and United. Avianca, Copa Airlines, JetBlue, and Volaris Costa Rica suspended their Tulum services over the same stretch.

Traffic moved with the routes. Grupo Mundo Maya, which administers the airport, closed 2025 with 1,244,661 passengers, 0.9 percent above 2024. The first quarter of 2026 brought 178,000 international travelers, down 34 percent year on year and roughly 90,800 people fewer, according to the Agencia Federal de Aviación Civil. International operations fell from 446 flights in January to 181 in May, a drop of more than 59 percent, while domestic flights slipped from 372 to 318.

Consultants quoted by El Universal in May put the terminal on course to handle about 700,000 passengers this year, compared with the 1.2 million it handled in each of the two previous years. The airport was built to handle 4 million passengers a year.

Punta Cana absorbed much of what Cuba and Jamaica lost

Tulum's winter is contested across the Caribbean, and two of the region's larger destinations saw their traveler numbers decline this year.

Cuba received 359,491 international tourists between January and May, 58.4 percent fewer than in the same months of 2025, according to the island's national statistics office. Arrivals from the United States fell 55.3 percent, to 25,572. In Jamaica, most of Hyatt's resorts stayed shut into late 2026 after Hurricane Melissa. Ernesto Veloz, president of the eastern Dominican hotel association Asoleste, told arecoa.com in March that Punta Cana was running at 80 to 85 percent occupancy and heading for a full house at Easter.

Quintana Roo expected to take its share. Andrés Martínez, director of the state tourism promotion council, told REPORTUR in May that the crises in Cuba and Jamaica were sending reservations to the Mexican Caribbean and that the state still expected more than 20 million visitors in 2026.

Coastal hotels are under 20 percent, and hoteliers are waiting for November

Tulum has not seen that share arrive. David Ortiz Mena, president of the Consejo Hotelero del Caribe Mexicano and the Asociación de Hoteles de Tulum, said on September 10 that hotels in the coastal zone were reporting occupancy below 20 percent and all-inclusive properties below 30 percent, about 10 points below last year. Occupancy has held at those levels since May, he said, and he expects them to last through October.

His list of what needs fixing before the planes arrive is short and not about aviation. Ground transport comes first, along with an authorized taxi fare table for Tulum, the same complaint that has followed every high season here since the airport opened.

The first of the new aircraft lands on Sunday, October 25, six weeks from now. Ortiz Mena's turning point comes three weeks after that, in November. The plane from the United States arrives on December 17, and by January 24 it is gone.

Would a once-a-week flight from Montreal, Toronto, or Newark change how you plan a trip to Tulum this winter? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.