More WestJet flights cancelled as Canadian airline strike affects more than 100,000 travellers

TORONTO — A strike by aircraft mechanics forced WestJet, Canada’s second-largest airline, to cancel hundreds more flights on Sunday, disrupting the plans of about 110,000 travelers over the Canada Day long weekend. The airline responded by demanding action from the Canadian government.

About 680 workers, whose daily inspections and repairs are essential to the airline’s operations, walked off work on Friday evening despite an order from the labor minister for binding arbitration.

“WestJet has received a binding arbitration award and is urgently awaiting clarification from the government that a strike and arbitration cannot occur simultaneously. They have committed to clarifying this and, like all Canadians, we are waiting,” Diederik Pen, president of WestJet Airlines, said in a statement on Sunday.

Since Thursday, WestJet has canceled 829 flights scheduled to operate between Thursday and Monday – the busiest travel weekend of the season.

The vast majority of flights on Sunday were cancelled as WestJet reduced its fleet from 180 aircraft to 32 active planes, topping the list of cancellations among major airlines worldwide over the weekend.

Trevor Temple-Murray was one of thousands of customers who rushed to rebook their trips after they were cancelled less than a day before.

“We just have to wait and see,” said Temple-Murray, a resident of Lethbridge, Alberta, who was waiting in his car in the parking lot of the Victoria, British Columbia, airport with his wife and 2-year-old son as they tried to get a plane to Calgary.

Their 6:05 p.m. flight had been cancelled and they would not find out until that evening whether the flight scheduled for the next day at 7:00 a.m. would take place.

“There are a lot of angry people there,” said Temple-Murray, pointing to the terminal.

Nearby, 10th-grade exchange student Marina Cebrian said she was supposed to be back home in Spain early Sunday, but after three flight cancellations, she will not return to her family until Tuesday.

“It’s disturbing,” she said. “I was supposed to be home today, about seven hours ago, but I’m not.”

Both WestJet and the Airplane Mechanics Fraternal Association accused the other side of refusing to negotiate seriously.

The union’s goal remains a negotiated deal rather than an arbitrator – a path it has rejected from the start.

The union says its wage demands would cost WestJet less than 8 million Canadian dollars ($5.6 million U.S.) on top of what the company offered for the first year of the collective agreement – the first contract between the two sides. It has acknowledged that the gains would exceed compensation of industry peers across Canada and be more in line with U.S. counterparts.

WestJet says it offered a 12.5% ​​pay increase in the first year of the contract and a cumulative 23.5% pay increase for the remainder of the 5 1/2-year term.