Air Canada Grounds Flights As Flight Attendants Go On Strike
Air Canada suspended operations of its main line and Rouge budget brand as the strike began at 12:58 a.m. New York time.
Air Canada grounded hundreds of flights and locked out flight attendants after they went on strike, disrupting some 130,000 passengers a day during the summer holiday season.
About 10,000 flight attendants walked off the job early Saturday after pay talks between the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the country’s biggest airline fell through. Flight staff set up picket lines at Toronto Pearson, Canada’s busiest airport, where the departure board showed one cancellation after another.
Air Canada suspended operations of its main line and Rouge budget brand as the strike began at 12:58 a.m. New York time. The Montreal-based carrier had scrapped hundreds of flights in the days before the deadline and said it imposed a lockout in response to the stoppage.
“We are now officially on strike,” the union’s Air Canada component said on its website.
It’s a major interruption to the nation’s air travel system. Air Canada is the country’s biggest airline, with a 50% share of domestic passengers at Toronto Pearson and about 61% at Montreal’s primary airport, according to a recent report from the country’s competition watchdog, based on 2023 data.
The strike may cost Air Canada C$75 million ($54 million) daily in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, TD Cowen analyst Tom Fitzgerald said in a note on Friday. Cargo operations will also be affected.
Regional flights by Air Canada Express aren’t affected because they’re operated by third-party airlines, allowing some flights to US destinations such as Newark and Boston to go ahead.
Pay Dispute
Pay is a major sticking point in the negotiations. Air Canada said it offered to increase total compensation, including benefits and bonuses, by 25% in the first year and 38% over four years, and agreed to pay workers for some of the time they spend on the ground. Air Canada flight attendants are paid only when the aircraft is in motion and not for work such as boarding — a common practice in the industry.
Patty Hajdu, Canada’s minister of jobs and families, said she met with both sides late Friday and urged them to keep working to make a deal. “It is unacceptable that such little progress has been made,” she said in a social media post.
Last year, the government intervened in a national railway strike shortly after it began. It also stepped in to get striking postal workers back to the job.
CUPE said the pay proposal would in fact represent a salary increase of 17.2% over four years. The union said a junior attendant makes C$1,952 a month before tax, and that Air Canada’s best first-year proposal is an 8% raise yielding C$2,108 a month, more than C$700 short of the full-time federal minimum wage.
The walkout dashes hopes that holidaymakers would see a repeat of the last-minute deal reached when Air Canada pilots threatened to walk out last September.
Air Canada shares closed 0.6% higher in Toronto on Friday, but are down 11% this year.
