Toronto/CMEDIA: Following the end of a strike by its flight attendants, Air Canada expects most of its domestic and international flights to take off today after resuming operations Tuesday.
An online dashboard tracking Air Canada’s service resumption said that 98 percent of domestic flights were expected to operate over the next 24 hours, along with 99 percent of U.S. flights Thursday morning.
With 94 percent of planned flights expected to operate, the airline’s ramp-up of international flights has also nearly caught up.
Mark Nasr, Air Canada chief operations officer, said earlier this week that the restart process would take longer for international routes because the airline brought crews home before the strike implying that when the strike ended, crews weren’t in position overseas to staff return flights back to Canada.
Up to 10 days are expected for service to return to normal levels across Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge.
The company said on Wednesday that it was adopting a policy to reimburse certain customers if they booked alternative transportation in lieu of cancelled flights between Aug. 15 and Aug. 23.
A new tentative agreement was struck between the airline and the union representing more than 10,000 of its flight attendants on Tuesday morning with the help of a federal mediator.
The proposed deal still is subject to ratification by the flight attendants, with a vote scheduled to take place from Aug. 27 to Sept. 6.
The Air Canada component of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Terms of the tentative deal that was shared on its website include a 12 percent salary hike this year for most junior flight attendants, while more senior members are set for an eight percent pay bump.
All members are set to receive a three percent raise in 2026, followed by 2.5 percent in 2027 and 2.75 percent in 2028.
Running until March 2029, the tentative agreement would also address the contentious issue of unpaid work while airplanes are not in the air.
Starting from this year, flight attendants would receive half their hourly wage rate for 60 minutes of ground time on narrow-body aircraft and 70 minutes on wide-body planes and would rise to 60 of the hourly wage rate next April, 65 percent in 2027 and 70 percent in 2028.
