A strike by plane mechanics has forced WestJet, Canada’s second-largest airline, to cancel hundreds more flights on Sunday, disrupting the travel plans of approximately 110,000 passengers during the Canada Day long weekend. The airline has called for intervention from the federal government.
Around 680 mechanics, essential for daily inspections and repairs, walked off the job on Friday evening despite a directive for binding arbitration from the labor minister.
“WestJet has received a binding arbitration order and is awaiting urgent clarification from the government that a strike and arbitration cannot coexist. This is an issue they have committed to address, and like all Canadians, we are waiting,” WestJet Airlines President Diederik Pen said in a statement on Sunday.
Since Thursday, WestJet has canceled 829 flights scheduled through Monday, the busiest travel weekend of the season.
The majority of Sunday’s flights were canceled as WestJet reduced its 180-plane fleet to 32 active aircraft, topping the global list for cancellations among major airlines over the weekend.
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Trevor Temple-Murray was among thousands of customers scrambling to rebook after their trips were abruptly canceled. “We’ll just have to wait it out,” said Temple-Murray, a Lethbridge, Alberta resident, waiting in a car with his wife and 2-year-old son in the Victoria, British Columbia airport parking lot, hoping to catch a flight to Calgary. Their 6:05 p.m. flight had been canceled, and they wouldn’t know until the evening whether a scheduled 7 a.m. flight the next day would proceed. “There are a lot of angry people in there,” he noted, pointing at the terminal.
Nearby, Grade 10 exchange student Marina Cebrian said she was supposed to be back home in Spain early Sunday but now won’t return until Tuesday after enduring three flight cancellations. “It’s distressing,” she said. “I was supposed to be home today, like seven hours ago, but I’m not.”
Both WestJet and the Airplane Mechanics Fraternal Association have accused each other of refusing to negotiate in good faith. The union’s goal remains to secure a deal through bargaining rather than arbitration, a route it opposed from the start.
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The union claims its demands around wages would cost WestJet less than $8 million CAD (US$5.6 million) beyond what the company has offered for the first year of the collective agreement, the first contract between the two sides. It acknowledges that the proposed gains would exceed compensation for industry colleagues across Canada and align more closely with U.S. counterparts.
WestJet says it has offered a 12.5% wage increase in the first year of the contract and a compounded wage increase of 23.5% over the remaining 5 1/2-year term.
