After three days of striking and an initial refusal to return to work as ordered by a government labor board, the union representing approximately 10,000 Air Canada (ACDVF) flight attendants reached a tentative labor agreement with the country's flagship airline.
The strike began on Aug. 16 after 99.7% of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) members voted against the offer of a 38% pay raise over four years; while the deal still needs to be formally voted in, negotiations led to an immediate increase of between 8% and 12% and 60 minutes of ground pay at 50% a flight attendant's hourly rate on each flight they take (the issue of uncounted hours was a key reason that the flight attendants did not accept the initial proposal).
Don't miss the move: SIGN UP for TheStreet's FREE Daily newsletter
Multiple Air Canada flights still canceled into Wednesday and Thursday
“Flight attendants at Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge have reached a tentative agreement, achieving transformational change for our industry after a historic fight to affirm our Charter rights,” CUPE spokesperson Hugh Pouliot said in a media statement. “Unpaid work is over. We have reclaimed our voice and our power.”
While some flights slowly began to resume at 4 p.m. on Aug. 19, the process of getting back to full operations is not immediate — data from analytics provider Cirium shows that 87 out of the 353 scheduled Air Canada flights on Aug. 20 were canceled while at least an additional 10 flights will also be canceled on Aug. 21. Transatlantic flights from European and Asian cities are among the last to resume and so stranded travelers have had to either wait to be rescheduled for an indefinite period of time at their destination or pay the spiking fares at a competing airline.
Related: As Americans flock to Canada, a major travel trend is fully reversed
For travelers who have seen or are yet to see their travel plans disrupted, Air Canada has launched a form for claiming the refunds it had promised when it first became clear that a strike was inevitable.
Image source: Shutterstock
‘Customers whose flights are canceled can obtain a full refund': Air Canada
“Customers whose flights are cancelled will be notified and can obtain a full refund,” the airline said in a statement on Aug. 13 while adding that those “without confirmed flights should not go to the airport.”
The recently-launched form asks travelers to fill in their personal and contact information as well as proof of flight purchase and information on how much they lost due to the cancelation (some travelers are able to automatically rebook or refund their travel).
More on travel:
- United Airlines places big bet on new flights to trendy destination
- Government issues new travel advisory on popular beach destination
- Another country just issued a new visa requirement for visitors
“Please complete this form if: you booked directly with Air Canada and you only completed part of your journey with Air Canada and/or need reimbursement for an alternative method of transportation,” the form instructions state.
Those who booked their ticket through the loyalty program Aeroplan or with a flight booking platform need to go through where they made the payment to get the refund. With the strike starting on a weekend in the peak summer travel period, over 130,000 passengers per day were affected by the travel disruptions.
Air Canada chief executive Michael Rousseau had previously stated that getting Air Canada back to its normal operations could take up to 10 days.
Related: I went inside the plane running the longest flight in the world
