Travel chaos as major airline cancels more than 800 flights after shock union strike

Canada’s second-largest airline left tens of thousands of passengers stranded and looking for answers after canceling hundreds of flights over the holiday weekend.

Calgary-based WestJet announced Saturday morning that it would cancel more than 400 flights through Sunday. This affects almost 50,000 customers. The company is trying to reach an agreement with the Aircraft Mechanical Fraternal Association, which voted to strike on Friday evening, prompting hundreds of workers to walk off the job.

The airline canceled another 410 flights on Friday night, bringing the total number of flights canceled on Sunday to more than 800.

WestJet will continue to cancel flights to reduce its operating fleet from about 200 planes to about 30 over the weekend as thousands of travelers try to get away before Canada Day on July 1.

Passengers at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport told how they arrived at Terminal 3 to get answers and be rebooked on another flight, but received no response from the airline.

Villamor Torres and Mary Jane Herrera said they went to the airport after having trouble rebooking their flight to the Cayman Islands over the phone.

They told how they were all ready to travel on Saturday when they received an email around 9.40am saying the flight had been cancelled.

“We’re trying to figure out what to do,” Herrera said told The Globe and Mail.

“We are in the middle of purchasing a new flight, but they said that if we get a new flight, they will not compensate us.”

Amy Morris, who visited Canada for the first time from Atlanta, Georgia, also described the situation as “chaos.”

“We had a hike planned tomorrow in Banff, we lost the whole first day anyway,” she said. “It’s not a great introduction to Canada.”

She said her family of four was en route to Calgary when they heard their connecting flight to Toronto had been cancelled.

‘We are not getting any information from WestJet at all; they said we would get a relocation within a few hours, but we have not heard anything.

‘It was [our] “Last family vacation,” Morris added. “The kids are moving to another state and this is supposed to be our last vacation.”

Others have turned to

“Tens of thousands of dollars are gone because you can’t put your pride aside and save the biggest travel week of the year,” he posted Saturday.

‘WestJet will never recover from this incompetence.’

Matt Estrada also said he had to spend $451 on a hotel room because his flight was canceled. He claimed WestJet would not cover the cost of the accommodations because the strikes were “unplanned.”

“Some kind of act of God, they say,” he wrote, adding that there are “no rental cars available either.”

Meanwhile, Samin Sahan and Samee Jan said they were planning to leave for Calgary on Saturday with their extended family when they received an email that their flight had been moved to Monday.

They said they decided to go to the airport anyway, seeking clarification and hoping to get on an earlier flight, but they received no response.

“This inaction hurts a lot of people, both their own companies and their customers, who will likely never be their customers again,” Sahan said.

One of the striking technicians at Toronto’s Pearson Airport said it apologizes to passengers for the inconvenience.

‘The reason they [the passengers] “The fact that people may have missed or had to cancel a flight is because WestJet is not sitting down to negotiate in a respectful manner,” said Sean McVeigh.

‘We take a lot of responsibility and just want to be valued financially.’

The Aircraft Mechanical Fraternal Association claims that WestJet’s “unwillingness” to negotiate made the strike inevitable and accuses the airline of insinuating retaliation against union members.

WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech blamed a “rogue US government” trying to make inroads into Canada.

He claimed the union rejected an offer that would have made the airline’s mechanics the “highest paid in the country.”

Von Hoensbroech also said that, as far as the airline is concerned, negotiations with the union came to an end when Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to resolve the contract dispute through binding arbitration – a process in which a third party deliberates on the terms.

The board on Friday ordered the contract to be finalized through arbitration, but noted that O’Regan’s referral “does not have the effect of suspending the right to strike or lockout.”

“This makes a strike completely absurd, because the reason you actually strike is to put pressure on the negotiating table,” Von Hoensbroech said.

‘If there is no negotiating table, there is no point; there should be no strike.”

According to The Globe and Mail, WestJet President Diedrik Pen also said the airline was “extremely outraged” by the union and that he would hold the union “100 percent responsible for the unnecessary stress and costs that this has caused.”

Minister O’Regan said he met with representatives from both WestJet and the union on Saturday and told them they needed to work together “to resolve their differences and reach an initial agreement.”

The two sides would meet again on Sunday with a mediator, Bret Ostreich, president of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, told Reuters.

“All we want is to get back to the table,” he said, promising that “the strike will remain in effect until we reach an agreement.”

In the meantime, Canadian air passenger rights advocate Gabor Lokacs says WestJet has a legal obligation to offer passengers whose flights were cancelled a reasonable and prompt alternative.

“Under the Air Passenger Protection Regulations, they have to rebook you on another airline or buy you a ticket with a competitor,” he told The Globe and Mail, adding that the airline has to do this within the first few hours of a flight being cancelled.

“If WestJet is unavailable for several hours, they are not fulfilling their obligation,” he said.

Lokacs advises passengers who cannot reach the airline or are not offered an alternative travel plan to book a flight at their own expense and send the bill to WestJet.

But most importantly, he said, “every message and exchange with the airline must be documented.”