Air Canada Air Cargo Profile

Air Canada Cargo is the freight arm of Air Canada (IATA AC, ICAO ACA), Canada's flag carrier and largest airline. The parent traces its history to 1937, when it was founded as Trans-Canada Air Lines, adopting the Air Canada name in 1965. Headquartered in the Saint-Laurent borough of Montreal, the airline is publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and has no corporate parent group. Air Canada was a founding member of Star Alliance in 1997. The cargo business, first branded in 1978, was relaunched with dedicated freighters in December 2021 to complement its long-standing belly operation.

The dedicated freighter fleet is built on the Boeing 767-300, using converted 767-300ER passenger airframes designated 767-300BDSF, some drawn from former Air Canada Rouge aircraft. The fleet peaked at eight in early 2024 before two factory-built 767 freighters were withdrawn to storage at Kansas City and later leased to Ethiopian Airlines, leaving about six in service. Air Canada Cargo has said it will not expand the freighter fleet, instead growing capacity through widebody belly space on Boeing 777, 787 Dreamliner, and Airbus A330 passenger aircraft, which each carry roughly 20 to 30 tonnes of cargo per long-haul flight.

Air Canada Cargo operates from four Canadian cargo hubs at Toronto Pearson (YYZ), Montreal-Trudeau (YUL), Vancouver (YVR), and Calgary (YYC), with self-handled facilities also at Chicago, London, and Frankfurt. Toronto Pearson anchors the network and houses a cold-chain facility with more than 22,000 square feet of temperature-controlled storage for pharmaceuticals and perishables, plus specialised handling for time-critical and live-animal shipments. Freighters concentrate on lanes linking Canada with Europe, Latin America, and the United States, while belly capacity extends the reach to more than 450 destinations across six continents through interline and trucking partnerships.