WestJet cancels flights ahead of possible maintenance strike | News

Canada’s second-largest airline, WestJet, has begun cancelling flights ahead of a strike by maintenance and engineering staff.

The Calgary-based airline announced on June 18 that it had canceled “approximately 40 flights” from its schedule this week, affecting about 6,500 customers.

The airline says it will park the planes “in a safe and orderly manner” and hopes to “minimize the risk of stranding” for guests and crew and “avoid abandoning the aircraft in remote locations.”

The decision to cancel the flights comes as the WestJet Group awaits a response from the Canadian Industrial Relations Board (CIRB). If the CIRB’s request for intervention is accepted, WestJet and its employees would enter into arbitration for an initial collective agreement while preventing industrial action by either party.

“We are deeply discouraged that we find ourselves in a situation where we have to activate our emergency plan and start parking aircraft due to the strike announcement by (the union) AMFA,” says Diederik Pen, the airline’s COO.

“After the members’ almost unanimous decision to reject a generous interim collective agreement that would have made our aircraft maintenance technicians among the best paid in the country, with a net wage increase of 30 to 40 percent in the first year of the proposed agreement, it is clear that the negotiation process has failed.”

Last week, WestJet reached an agreement with WestJet Encore pilots, ending a period of bitter negotiations that nearly brought the airline’s regional operations to a halt.

The five-year collective bargaining agreement was ratified on June 13, according to the Air Line Pilots Association International, the union that represents Encore’s pilots. Nearly 80 percent of pilots who cast votes voted in favor of the agreement.

The contract is effective immediately, retroactively to January 1, and runs until the end of 2028.