Travellers in Canada and abroad scrambled to secure flights on Sunday after striking Air Canada flight attendants defied a federal back-to-work order, abruptly halting the airline’s plans to resume operations.
Lila Rousseaux, who was scheduled to fly home with her family from Zurich to Toronto on Sunday, told CBC News she spent all of Saturday glued to her phone for news about whether her flight would be cancelled.
At 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, she was informed it was.
“I spent one and a half hours on the phone with the agent … lots of turbulence,” Rousseaux said.
“There was a lot of inflexibility in terms of what can be done,” she said, adding that her suggestions to take a train to Amsterdam to catch a plane or fly directly to the U.S. before driving across the border were rebuffed by the agent.
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Rousseaux said she finally booked an “awful” overnight flight to Atlanta, lamenting that she is no longer being seated with her children.
“The distress in my family is very acute,” she said.
Ottawa moved to intervene in the labour dispute on Saturday, less than 12 hours after the strike and lockout took effect, with federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu saying she was invoking Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to ask the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to send the two sides to binding arbitration and to order the airline and its flight attendants back to work in the meantime.
The Montreal-based airline subsequently announced early Sunday that it planned to resume flights in the evening, but just hours later, the union representing more than 10,000 flight attendants said in a statement that members would remain on strike — scuttling those plans and prompting Air Canada to cancel some 240 flights.
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At Vancouver International Airport, passengers stood in long lines to get the latest updates on their delayed and cancelled flights, as workers outside demonstrated with signs reading, “Unpaid work won’t fly.”
Chi Ehis told The Canadian Press she is having to pay an extra $2,000 to meet her family in Florida for a vacation after her flight was cancelled Sunday morning.
Instead of flying straight from Vancouver, she is now taking a bus to Seattle before catching another, pricier flight.
“I can’t scream. I have to just figure out what to do,” Ehis said, adding her plane ticket cost $1,500.
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In Toronto, Khalid Muhammadi told CBC News he flew in from Dubai en route to Edmonton but is now stuck at Pearson International Airport.
“WestJet is asking eight grand; what am I supposed to do?” he said.
Muhammadi voiced frustrations with the federal government for not resolving the labour dispute.
“You knew a strike was coming … do your job.”
Air Canada has said passengers whose flights are cancelled will be offered a full refund or the opportunity to change their travel plans without a fee.
However, it said that under Canada’s airline passenger protection regulations, customers are not eligible for compensation for expenses incurred during travel delays deemed outside the airline’s control.
“Customers in Canada are not eligible for compensation for delayed or cancelled flights, meals, hotels or other incidental expenses for situations outside the carrier’s control, such as a labour disruption,” the airline said.
Air Canada said in a news release that its flights would resume Monday evening, although a notice on its booking page said all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flights were cancelled until further notice.
