Air Canada plans to restart services as union says attendants ‘remain on strike’

The union representing 10,000 striking Air Canada flight attendants has said it will challenge an order for them to return to work, adding “we remain on strike”.

The Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered airline staff back by 2pm on Sunday after the government intervened and Air Canada said it planned to resume flights on Sunday evening.

“We will be challenging this blatantly unconstitutional order,” the CUPE union said in a statement.

“We remain on strike. We demand a fair, negotiated contract and to be compensated for all hours worked.”

The strike has stranded more than 100,000 travellers around the world during the peak summer travel season.

The country’s largest airline said early on Sunday that the first flights would resume later in the day but that it would take several days before its operations returned to normal.

It said some flights would be cancelled over the next seven to 10 days until the schedule was stabilised.

Less than 12 hours after workers walked off the job, federal jobs minister Patty Hajdu ordered the 10,000 flight attendants back to work, saying now was not the time to take risks with the economy and noting the unprecedented tariffs the US had imposed on Canada.

Ms Hajdu referred the work stoppage to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.

The airline said the Canada Industrial Relations Board had extended the term of the existing collective agreement until a new one was determined by the arbitrator.

The shutdown of Canada’s largest airline early on Saturday was impacting about 130,000 people a day.

Air Canada operates around 700 flights per day.

According to numbers from aviation analytics provider Cirium, Air Canada had cancelled a total of 671 flights by Saturday afternoon — following 199 on Friday. A further 96 flights scheduled for Sunday were already suspended.

The bitter contract fight escalated on Friday as the union turned down Air Canada’s prior request to enter into government-directed arbitration, which allows a third-party mediator to decide the terms of a new contract.

Flight attendants walked off the job around 1am Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday.

Around the same time, Air Canada said it would begin locking flight attendants out of airports.

Ms Hajdu said that her Liberal government was not anti-union, saying it was clear the two sides were at an impasse.

Passengers whose flights were impacted would be eligible to request a full refund on the airline’s website or mobile app, according to Air Canada.

The airline said it would also offer alternative travel options through other Canadian and foreign airlines when possible.

Still, it warned that it could not guarantee immediate rebooking because flights on other airlines were already full “due to the summer travel peak”.

Air Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees have been in contract talks for about eight months, but are yet to reach a tentative deal.

Both sides have said they remain far apart on the issue of pay and the unpaid work flight attendants do when planes are not in the air.

The airline’s latest offer included a 38% increase in total compensation, including benefits and pensions, over four years, which it said “would have made our flight attendants the best compensated in Canada”.

But the union pushed back, saying the proposed 8% raise in the first year did not go far enough because of inflation.