A small number of Australian services are being impacted as Air Canada started cancelling flights overnight ahead of possible industrial action.
The airline announced a first set of cancellations involving several dozen flights impacting long-haul overseas flights due to depart Canada yesterday.
They include Air Canada’s flight from Vancouver to Sydney scheduled to depart last night and the returning flight due to leave Sydney tomorrow.
The union representing around 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants issued a 72-hour strike notice Wednesday. In response, the airline issued a lockout notice.
Mark Nasr, chief operations officer for Air Canada, said the carrier has begun a gradual suspension of operations.
“All flights will be paused by Saturday early morning,” he said.
Nasr said this approach will help facilitate an orderly restart “which under the best circumstances will take a full week to complete.”
He said a grounding will affect 25,000 Canadians a day abroad who may become stranded. They expect 500 flights to be cancelled by the end of Friday.
He said customers whose flights are cancelled will be eligible for a full refund, and it has also made arrangements with other Canadian and foreign carriers to provide alternative travel options “to the extent possible.”
The union has said its main sticking points revolve around what it calls flight attendants’ “poverty wages” and unpaid labour when planes aren’t in the air.
Some flight attendants at the airline’s news conference on Thursday held up signs that read “Unpaid work won’t fly” and “Poverty wages = UnCanadian.”
