WestJet customers continued to bear the brunt of a labour disruption Tuesday as the airline struggled to rebook passengers after a one-day strike by cabin crew and a lockout by the airline.
The airline resumed operations Monday after it reached a tentative agreement to end the strike, but said in an email Tuesday that WestJet is “entering the recovery phase following a labour disruption” and that the “impacts of the disruption continue as the airline works to restore its network.”
On Tuesday, the airline had cancelled 16 flights as of 11 a.m., according to data from the analytics company Cirium, and WestJet was still encouraging customers to continue to check the status of their flights before heading to the airport, according to the airline’s email.
As of Aug. 1, more than 900 flights were cancelled as a result of the labour disruption, according to Cirium, and WestJet says a full return to normal operations will take time as the airline resumes flying and repositions its aircraft and crews.
WestJet chief executive officer Alexis von Hoensbroech said Monday that the company is “working hard to restore service and get our guests on their way to their destinations as quickly as possible.”
WestJet flight attendants walked off the job early Sunday morning after the airline and CUPE Local 8125, which represents WestJet’s more than 4,000 flight attendants, couldn’t reach a deal for a new contract before the strike deadline.
WestJet customer Chris Kaiser said he paid $3,600 to get his family home from the Cayman Islands after the Toronto to Calgary leg of the trip was cancelled on Saturday.
Kaiser said his family was told by WestJet representatives that they would be compensated $250 for a hotel after landing at Toronto’s Pearson airport, but Kaiser said everything in the GTA was booked solid.
His family had to take a $160 Uber trip to Rockwood, near Guelph, to stay with his wife’s aunt.
On the way there, Kaiser called WestJet to ask them to rebook his family on Porter or Air Canada flights to Calgary, only to be told after 10 hours on the phone that those flights were full and that his family could be rebooked on a WestJet flight the next morning, he said.
That flight, and other WestJet flights that were subsequently rebooked by the airline, were cancelled.
“By the time I woke up yesterday morning I was rebooked on a WestJet flight from Toronto to Calgary on Friday the 7th,” said Kaiser, who paid for his family to take a Porter flight home on Sunday. “I was like, ‘this is insane.’ ”
His wife’s parents, who travelled with the family to the Cayman Islands, are still in Rockwood waiting for a WestJet flight home to British Columbia.
The deal between WestJet and its flight attendants hasn’t been released and won’t be until the deal is ratified, according to both the union and WestJet, a vote that will take place within 30 days, according to an email from the union.
But the last offer from the company, rebuffed by the union before it went on strike, included a 13 per cent wage increase effective Oct. 1, 2026, plus 2.5 per cent increases each January for the next three years.
The deal also offered a “duty pay premium,” or a payment for all duty hours, equivalent to another 12 per cent of salary increase, according to WestJet.
Flight attendants have typically only been paid for “block hours,” meaning the time period when an aircraft is pushed back from the departure gate to when the aircraft arrives at the destination gate.
“Historically, cabin crews have been compensated for these block hours, even though actual duty (hours) includes work before, in between and after actual time spent on the journey,” said William Morrison, a professor of economics at the School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Morrison is also chair of the executive committee for the European Aviation Conference Institute.
Air Canada flight attendants also receive partial pay for time spent working on the ground, a deal that was instituted through binding arbitration after flight attendants walked off the job last August.
Morrison said the Air Canada and WestJet deals “reflect the desire by cabin crews to be recognized and fairly compensated for their entire duty hours rather than just block hours.”
