Canada’s second-largest airline left tens of thousands of passengers stranded and searching for answers after canceling hundreds of flights over the holiday weekend.
Calgary-based WestJet announced Saturday morning that it would cancel more than 400 flights through Sunday, affecting nearly 50,000 customers, as it struggles to reach an agreement with the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which voted to favor of the strike on Friday night and caused hundreds of employees to walk off the job.
The airline cancelled an additional 410 flights overnight, bringing the total to more than 800 flights cancelled as of Sunday.
WestJet will now continue to cancel flights to reduce its operating fleet from about 200 planes to just 30 over the weekend, as thousands of travelers try to escape ahead of Canada Day on July 1.
WestJet left nearly 50,000 passengers in the lurch after canceling more than 800 flights over the weekend.
The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association voted to strike Friday night, prompting hundreds of employees to walk off the job.
Passengers at Toronto Pearson International Airport described how they arrived at Terminal 3 to get answers and be rescheduled for another flight, only to be met with silence from airline officials.
Villamor Torres and Mary Jane Herrera said they went to the airport after having difficulty rebooking their flight to the Cayman Islands over the phone.
They said they were ready to travel on Saturday when around 9:40 a.m. they received an email notifying them that the flight had been cancelled.
“We’re trying to figure out what to do,” Herrera he told the Globe and Mail.
“We’re in the middle of getting a new flight, but they said if we get a new flight they won’t compensate us.”
Amy Morris, who visited Canada for the first time from Atlanta, Georgia, also described the situation as “chaos.”
Passengers have described how they left without answers after their flights were canceled over the bank holiday weekend.
“We were scheduled to go on a hiking trip tomorrow in Banff, but at least we lost everything on the first day,” he said. “It’s not a good way to see Canada.”
He said his family of four was headed to Calgary when they learned of their flight cancellation on a connecting flight to Toronto.
‘We haven’t received any information from WestJet; they said that within a couple of hours we will get a reassignment, but we haven’t heard anything.
“It was (our) last family vacation,” Morris added. “The kids are moving out of state and it was supposed to be our last hurray.”
Matt Estrada claimed online that he was forced to buy a hotel room after his flight was cancelled.
Liam Stein also claimed that his wedding in Mexico was ruined by flight cancellations
Others have taken to X to express their frustrations with the airline, including Liam Stein, who claimed his “wedding in Mexico is ruined because of their incompetence in mitigating this strike.”
“Tens of thousands of dollars lost because you can’t swallow your pride and save the biggest travel week of the year,” he posted Saturday.
“WestJet will never recover from this incompetence.”
Matt Estrada also said he was forced to spend $451 on a hotel room because his flight was cancelled and claimed WestJet would not cover the costs of accommodations because the strikes were “unplanned.”
“It’s like an act of God, they say,” he wrote, adding that “there are also no rental cars available.”
Meanwhile, Samin Sahan and Samee Jan said they were planning to leave Saturday with their family on a trip to Calgary when they received an email informing them their flight had been rescheduled for Monday.
They said they decided to go to the airport anyway, seeking clarification and hoping to catch an earlier flight, but got no response.
“This inaction is hurting a lot of people, their own businesses and their customers, who will probably never be their customers again,” Sahan said.
WestJet will continue to reduce its fleet as contract negotiations continue
It will operate only 30 of its aircraft, out of its fleet of approximately 200.
One of the striking mechanics outside Toronto’s Pearson Airport said he regretted any inconvenience to passengers.
“However, the reason they (passengers) possibly missed a flight or had to cancel is because WestJet is not respectfully coming to the table and negotiating,” Sean McVeigh said.
“We take on a lot of responsibility and we would simply like to be valued financially.”
The Aircraft Mechanical Fraternal Association has said WestJet’s “unwillingness” to negotiate made the strike inevitable and accused the airline of hinting at retaliatory action against union members.
Meanwhile, WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech blamed the situation on a “rogue syndicate from the US” that is trying to make inroads into Canada.
He claimed the union rejected an offer that would have made the airline’s mechanics the “highest paid in the country.”
The Fraternal Aircraft Mechanics Association has claimed that WestJet’s “unwillingness” to negotiate made the strike inevitable.
Von Hoensbroech also said that as far as the airline is concerned, negotiations with the union came to an end once Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to resolve the contract dispute through binding arbitration, a process in which a third party deliberates on the terms.
The board ordered the contract to be finalized through arbitration on Friday, but noted that O’Regan’s referral “does not have the effect of suspending the right to strike or lockout.”
“This makes a strike totally absurd, because the real reason for going on strike is because you need to put pressure on the negotiating table,” Von Hoensbroech said.
“If there is no negotiating table, it makes no sense: there should be no strike.”
WestJet President Diedrik Pen also said the airline was “extremely disgusted” with the union and would hold it “100 percent responsible for the unnecessary stress and costs incurred as a result,” according to The Globe and Mail.
WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech blamed the situation on a “rogue syndicate from the United States” that is trying to make its way into Canada.
On Saturday, Minister O’Regan said he met with representatives from both WestJet and the union and told them they needed to work together “to resolve their differences and achieve their first agreement.”
The two sides were scheduled to meet again with a mediator on Sunday, Bret Ostreich, president of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, told Reuters.
“All we want to do is get back to the table,” he said, vowing that “the strike will continue until we reach an agreement.”
Meanwhile, Canadian air passenger rights advocate Gabor Lokacs says WestJet has a legal obligation to provide passengers on cancelled flights with a reasonable and prompt alternative.
“Under the Air Passenger Protection Regulations, they must reschedule on another airline or purchase a ticket from a competitor,” he told The Globe and Mail, adding that the airline must do so within the first few hours after a flight is cancelled. .
“If WestJet is unavailable for several hours, it is not fulfilling its obligation,” he said.
Lokacs now recommends that passengers who cannot contact the airline or are not offered an alternative travel plan book a flight on their own and submit the invoice to WestJet.
But most importantly, he said, “they must document every message and exchange with the airline.”
