Toronto: Air Canada cancelled hundreds of flights on Friday, impacting tens of thousands of passengers including many flying to and from India, as it responded to a strike by its flight attendants.
The airline announced it had “suspended all operations” for Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flights following the strike by its 10,000 flight attendants represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees. The strike began early on Saturday.
Among the flights impacted by cancellations were direct flights from Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal to New Delhi, as well as those from Calgary with a stopover in London.
With the strike action slated to begin on Saturday, Air Canada announced on Friday evening that 623 flights had been cancelled and 100,100 passengers impacted.
On Thursday, the national carrier had announced it had “begun a phased wind-down of most of our operations, to be completed over the next two days.”
The union sought higher pay as well as improved working conditions but no timely settlement had been reached with the airline by the deadline.
Travel industry specialists were hopeful there wouldn’t be large-scale disruption affecting those traveling between India and Canada. Vibhor Chhabra, director of the Toronto-based Grand Travel, felt that the issue was “manageable” as Air Canada was a member of the Star Alliance group of airlines. With airlines like Air India also being part of that group, passengers could be transferred to the latter’s flights, he said, or to those flying via Europe to India. “They (passengers) are being moved to other routes, they will be protected by arrangements with other airlines. But some impact will be there,” he felt.
Flights returning from India were already impacted even before the strike action started, as Air Canada started cancelling long-haul flights, including those to India, in advance. On Thursday the airline posted on X that the union had rejected attendants’ union an agreement to fly passengers back to Canada and as “a result, 25 000 additional passengers are going to be stranded abroad.”
Air Canada has daily flights leaving for Indian destinations including New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Kochi from the cities of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.
