The three-day strike by Air Canada flight attendants may have ended, but thousands of passengers across the country remain stranded and are still trying to find their way home as the airline slowly rebuilds its schedule.
For Ottawa couple Noha Zaher and Ibraheem Sabry, the ordeal has stretched into nearly 60 hours. After being denied boarding twice in Cairo due to overbooked flights caused by Air Canada cancellations, they finally landed in Toronto on Tuesday—only to give up on flying altogether and book a bus home. “We were, of course, frustrated,” Zaher said. “I had work on Monday, so I missed two days after three weeks of vacation.”
Others have been just as resourceful. The Team Saskatchewan U15 boys baseball squad, headed to a national tournament in Summerside, P.E.I., found their Air Canada flight cancelled. Parents and grandparents stepped aside from their own WestJet bookings to free up 19 tickets for the players and coaches. The team will miss the opening ceremonies but is expected to make Thursday’s first game, arriving through a patchwork of flights into Moncton, Halifax, and Charlottetown.
Across Canada, passengers are weighing costly workarounds. Some, like Newfoundland traveler Steve Marcotte, pieced together an expensive alternate route through Halifax. Others, like Ontario’s Kathy Keogh, considered a long drive home after her Alaska cruise ended with a cancelled flight. “Other airlines were price gouging. It was disgusting,” she said, though she eventually secured a rebooking after the strike ended. Ottawa resident Cora Li, returning from a family trip to the West Coast, even debated a 45-hour cross-country drive before news of resumed flights offered some hope.
Air Canada says it expects to take seven to 10 days to restore full service as planes and crews are repositioned, warning that cancellations will continue in the meantime. By Tuesday evening, it had resumed more than half of its scheduled flights, with the priority on international routes.
The strike, which began Saturday, saw flight attendants defy a government back-to-work order before a federal mediator helped the airline and union reach a tentative deal early Tuesday. The agreement will go to CUPE’s more than 10,000 members for a vote. Air Canada estimates about 500,000 customers were affected during the disruption.
For many travellers, relief remains tempered by uncertainty. Long lines still snake through airports, and passengers like Quebec’s Terry Carriere, stuck in Vancouver after a biking trip in Whistler, are anxiously waiting for rebookings. “I said to my boss, it’s Air Canada. I can’t do anything,” Carriere admitted. Like thousands of others, he’s left hoping a seat will open before work obligations pull him home.