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 should “step by step restart its operations” on Tuesday “after reaching a mediated settlement with the Canadian Union of Public Staff via 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 Element of the Canadian Union of Public Staff, or CUPE, says the service’s wages are beneath 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 airplane sits at Vancouver Worldwide Airport in Richmond, B.C., Aug. 17, 2025.
Ethan Cairns/AP
“The suspension of our service is extraordinarily tough for our prospects. We deeply remorse and apologize for the influence on them of this labour disruption. Our precedence now’s to get them transferring as rapidly as potential,” Michael Rousseau, Air Canada’s president and chief govt officer, stated in a press release.
The “advanced endeavor” to full restoration, as Rousseau referred to it, may take as much as per week or longer.
The primary flights are scheduled for Tuesday night, and Air Canada has suggested prospects 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 following seven to 10 days till the schedule is stabilized,” Tuesday’s announcement said.
Air Canada was compelled to cancel lots of of flights on account of the work stoppage and and stated practically 500,000 prospects have been impacted in Canada and the U.S.
United, the American-based accomplice for Air Canada, advised ABC Information in a press release that only a few United prospects have been affected.
