Maurissa Zuccolo turned to see her fiancé staring at his phone with a look of utter regret on Friday night as the couple watched the Blue Jays play at the Rogers Centre.
Without him having to say it, she knew their worst fears had come true: their Air Canada flight to Punta Cana on Saturday, for the destination wedding they’d been planning for a year, had been cancelled due to the airline’s flight attendants’ strike.
Along with their plane tickets, the hotel accommodations that Zuccolo and Allan Paris, both 53, had secured through the Air Canada vacation package for themselves and their guests were also cancelled.
Although the couple successfully rebooked a flight through another airline that departs Sunday morning from Detroit, nine of their 21 guests were unable to attend the upcoming wedding on Tuesday, some deterred by the increased costs.
“It’s supposed to be the best day of my life. And now we’re trying to make it with what we have … but I’m missing my family and my friends,” said Zuccolo.
The Sudbury bride-to-be, who also had a $13,000 wedding package booked, added that her two adult daughters had already flown to the Dominican Republic resort town and were waiting for them to arrive.
Canada’s largest airline has cancelled more than 600 flights over the past two days in preparation for the strike, affecting 100,000 passengers. After more than 10,000 flight attendants officially walked off the job just before 1 a.m. Saturday, all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flights have been grounded.
Early Saturday afternoon, the federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order Air Canada and the Air Canada component of the Canadian Union of Public Employees to resume operations and resolve the eight-month-long negotiations through binding arbitration.
The CIRB is expected to execute the minister’s order within the next 24 hours to order the employees back to work, said Steven Tufts, an associate professor of labour at York University. But flight attendants may collectively choose to disobey orders, call in sick or not work, he added.
Zuccolo said she was disappointed that the airline didn’t notify her of the flight cancellation until the last minute.
Trying to hold back their “sadness and fears,” Zuccolo and Paris left the Blue Jays game early to dive into the scramble of finding alternative flights and hotel bookings.
The couple found a vacation package for six on Spirit Airlines out of Detroit, including flights and accommodations, for $3,350 per person, $900 more than what Air Canada had quoted, excluding one night’s hotel stay in the U.S.
“As a bride, I shouldn’t be having to worry about all of this,” Zuccolo said. “Why wouldn’t you give us more than eight hours’ notice? They could have cancelled these flights ahead of time to let people prepare.”
Joshua Santos, in Whistler, B.C., was set to fly to Toronto on Sunday to surprise his father on his 60th birthday, only to discover that his flight had been cancelled — just hours after he had checked in online without any problems in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“I’ve been travelling around for the past two, three years, so I just haven’t really had time to come home,” Santos said.
Now, he has reluctantly cancelled his trip after Air Canada said it could not rebook him on any alternative flights within the next three days, despite the airline telling him they checked options across more than 100 to 120 carriers.
Prices on other airlines have been jacked up, with a WestJet ticket from Whistler to Toronto costing $1,500 more than Santos’s budget allowed.
“It’s not the flight attendants’ fault,” Santos said. “It’s very discouraging that a big company such as Air Canada, which is generating well over a billion dollars in revenue, won’t bend.”
Santos added he was concerned that government-ordered arbitration was what the airline has wanted, and that the workers may not get the pay increases they want.
Labour professor Tufts echoed the sentiment, saying that flight attendants have little power — in the arbitration process, and also when Air Canada knows the workers could be ordered back to work, it leaves the airline with little incentive to bargain.
“Air Canada is equivalent to a 40-year-old living in their parents’ basement that won’t fend for itself,” Tufts said of Air Canada’s request for government intervention.
Tufts noted that the flight attendants’ demands to be compensated for ground duties could, in turn, motivate airlines to tighten their operations and ensure flights depart on time.
Zuccolo and Paris, who have been together since 2019, said they could no longer afford a two-week vacation in Punta Cana under their new travel package and have reduced it to just one week.
“It’s been the most stressful and emotional time, but I’m going to try and make the best of it and get there,” Zuccolo said. “It doesn’t feel great right now.”
