Air Canada to cancel 500 flights by Friday ahead of looming strike

Air Canada said on Thursday it expects to cancel several dozen flights by day’s end and around 500 flights by the end of Friday affecting 100,000 passengers, ahead of a planned Saturday strike by its unionized flight attendants.

Mark Nasr, chief operations officer at Air Canada, said the complexity of the carrier’s network, which operates over 250 aircraft on flights to over 65 countries, requires it to start winding down service now. Restarting operations would take a week to complete.

“It’s simply not the kind of system that we can start or stop at the push of a button,” Nasr told reporters in Toronto.

FlightAware data shows Air Canada has, thus far, canceled nine flights as of Thursday midday.

A strike would displace passengers, hit the country’s tourism sector during the height of summer travel, and pose a fresh test for the ruling Liberal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney, which has been asked by the carrier to intervene and impose arbitration.

Air Canada and low-cost carrier Air Canada Rouge carry about 130,000 customers a day. 

Air Canada is also the foreign carrier with the largest number of flights to the US.

US carrier United Airlines, a code share partner of Air Canada, said it has issued a travel waiver to help customers manage their travel plans.

Passengers expressed concerns to Reuters over missed vacations and getting stranded abroad due to the looming strike, but also voiced support for the flight attendants.

David Nguyen, 28, a pharmacist who is currently on vacation outside of Cancun, Mexico, said he is worried his flight back to Toronto on Friday will get canceled, leaving him stranded in paradise.

He said he tried rebooking on another carrier but all the refundable options are sold out and the ones that are left are over C$1,000 ($724.06).

“If my flight does get canceled, I think that’s where I’ll be in a little bit of a pickle because I don’t really know what my next step will be,” said Nguyen, adding that Air Canada “should just pay their flight attendants appropriately.”

Summer Mehdi, 19, a third-year college student at Queen’s University said her family of four planned to catch a flight from Toronto to Lisbon on Saturday, but their summer vacation to Portugal and France is now in limbo.

“My family and I, we 100% agree with the strike happening and we obviously want the employees to get what they deserve,” Mehdi said. “We just wish there was more communication and I think it’s just like a stressful situation for everyone.”

Unpaid work

Earlier in the day, Canadian Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu urged the country’s largest carrier and union to return to the bargaining table to reach a deal that could avert disruptions.

A spokesperson for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents the carrier’s 10,000 flight attendants, said Air Canada negotiators are not bargaining and have not responded to a proposal they made earlier this week.

“We believe the company wants the federal government to intervene and bail them out.”

CUPE has previously said it opposes binding arbitration.

Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, chief human resources officer at Air Canada, said the carrier is “still available to bargain at any time on the condition that the negotiation has substance.”

The Air Canada executives were speaking at a press conference that ended abruptly due to protests by union members donning placards.

The dispute hinges on the way airlines compensate flight attendants. Most airlines have traditionally paid attendants only when planes are in motion.

But in their latest contract negotiations, flight attendants in North America have sought compensation for hours worked, including for tasks like boarding passengers and waiting around the airport before and between flights.

The union said Air Canada had offered to begin compensating flight attendants for some unpaid work but only at 50% of their hourly rate.

The airline said it had offered a 38% increase in total compensation for flight attendants over four years, with a 25% raise in the first year.

($1 = 1.3811 Canadian dollars)