Air Canada plans to cancel 500 flights by Friday as its flight attendants prepare to go on strike.
At a hastily arranged press conference Thursday morning, Air Canada officials said the scale and complexity of its operations require the carrier to start winding down service now before flight attendants walk off the job on Saturday. At that point, the airline and its low-cost leisure-focused subsidiary Air Canada Rouge will be essentially shut down.
“This is a situation that was, and still is, avoidable,” said Arielle Meloul, Air Canada’s executive vice president.
Mark Nasr, the carrier’s chief operations officer, said it will take about one week to restart operations once the strike ends.
The press conference was forced to end early after flight attendants entered the room carrying signs reading “Unpaid work won’t fly” and “Poverty wages = UnCanadian.”
The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents Air Canada’s roughly 10,000 flight attendants, issued a 72-hour strike notice early Wednesday after the airline declared contract negotiations at an “impasse.” The flight attendants are expected to walk off the job at 1 a.m. Eastern time.
Air Canada, in turn, said it will lock the flight attendants out.
Only Air Canada Express flights, which are operated by Jazz and PAL Airlines, would continue to operate as normal.
Air Canada and CUPE have been negotiating the terms of a new labor contract for months and remain far apart on key issues.
The carrier’s latest offer includes a 38% pay increase for flight attendants over four years, but the union claims that, with inflation factored in, its members would actually be taking a pay cut if they accepted the deal. CUPE also said the tentative contract does little to fix the problem of flight attendants performing “unpaid work,” including “critical safety-related duties.”
Air Canada has said it may ask the Canadian government to intervene and impose binding arbitration, which would set the terms of a new contract without a vote by union members.
