After a number of days of canceled flights, delaying and derailing hundreds of passengers’ journey plans, the Air Canada flight attendant strike is formally over.
Canada’s largest airline announced it would “steadily restart its operations” on Tuesday “after reaching a mediated settlement with the Canadian Union of Public Staff by a course of overseen by a mutually agreed-to mediator.”
Some 10,000 flight attendants refused to return to work regardless of a authorities order on Sunday, amid a dispute with Air Canada over wages and unpaid labor. The Air Canada Part of the Canadian Union of Public Staff, or CUPE, says the service’s wages are under inflation, market worth, and the federal minimal wage and has requested that flight attendants be paid for groundwork, which incorporates labor carried out previous to takeoff and after touchdown.
The airline stated Tuesday it participated within the mediation discussions “on the premise that the union decide to have the airline’s 10,000 flight attendants instantly return to work” to permit the service to renew Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge operations that had been grounded since Saturday.
An Air Canada aircraft sits at Vancouver Worldwide Airport in Richmond, B.C., Aug. 17, 2025.
Ethan Cairns/AP
“The suspension of our service is extraordinarily troublesome for our clients. We deeply remorse and apologize for the impression on them of this labour disruption. Our precedence now could be to get them shifting as rapidly as attainable,” Michael Rousseau, Air Canada’s president and chief govt officer, stated in an announcement.
The “complicated enterprise” to full restoration, as Rousseau referred to it, may take as much as every week or longer.
The primary flights are scheduled for Tuesday night, and Air Canada has suggested clients that full, common service may very well be seven to 10 days out because the fleet of plane and its crews get in place.
“Throughout this course of, some flights can be cancelled over the subsequent seven to 10 days till the schedule is stabilized,” Tuesday’s announcement said.
Air Canada was compelled to cancel lots of of flights because of the work stoppage and and stated almost 500,000 clients had been impacted in Canada and the U.S.
United, the American-based accomplice for Air Canada, advised ABC Information in an announcement that only a few United clients had been affected.
