A quick look at recent airline labour disputes

WestJet’s 4,400 flight attendants went on strike early Sunday morning, with the airline’s flights halted on a busy summer travel weekend after the carrier and union failed to reach a new contract.

Over the past three years, strikes by Air Canada flight attendants and WestJet mechanics have briefly brought operations at the country’s two biggest airlines shuddering to a halt, and the threat of job action from pilots at WestJet and Air Transat was a real possibility during contract talks.

Here’s how those showdowns played out:

May 2023: WestJet pilots

Bargaining between WestJet and the union representing its 1,800 pilots came down to the wire, prompting WestJet to cancel more than 230 flights in preparation for a possible job action. A deal was reached hours ahead of the strike deadline on May 19.

Wages were the main issue. The pilots notched a 24 per cent pay bump over four years, a big win by historical standards.

The agreement raised expectations for labour gains elsewhere in Canadian aviation, and came months after Delta Air Lines pilots had secured a deal that included a 34 per cent pay hike over four years.

June 2024: WestJet plane mechanics

One day after the federal labour minister issued a directive for binding arbitration, WestJet plane mechanics went on strike, catching both the airline and Ottawa off guard.

Instead of resolving through an arbitrator, the work stoppage ended only when the union accepted a tentative deal — ratified by members weeks later — with wage gains of more than 26 per cent over five years.

The three-day strike raised questions about how consumers should respond to the threat of an airline strike, and a dispute resolution process that pushed tensions to the breaking point.

The labour board allowed the strike to go ahead after saying the federal directive had not explicitly barred it. The move forced WestJet to call off more than 1,100 flights affecting roughly 150,000 travellers — many of whom received less than a day’s notice of the change in plans.

August 2025: Air Canada flight attendants

Ten years after signing their last contract, some 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants hit the picket lines on Aug. 16 after failing to get the major gains on wages and boarding pay — compensation for work done on the ground — they’d been looking for.

Fewer than 12 hours later, Ottawa intervened. Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu invoked Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, directing the Canada Industrial Relations Board to impose binding arbitration and order employees back on the job.

The union took the remarkable step of defying the order, prompting the labour board to declare the strike unlawful. Nonetheless, the move forced Air Canada’s hand and then-CEO Michael Rousseau agreed to a tentative deal that allowed planes to hit the tarmac again, four days after being grounded.

In September, members rejected the wage offer and the standoff went to arbitration. The decision last February boosted flight attendants’ wages by 12 per cent for junior mainline cabin crew in the first year, with subsequent increases of between 2.5 and three per cent for the next three years.

Air Canada said the strike cost it $430 million in revenue.

December 2025: Transat pilots

Air Transat and the union representing its 750 pilots struck a deal hours before a Dec. 10 strike deadline.

Ratified in January, the deal negotiated by the Air Line Pilots Association handed aviators big gains. The five-year contract included raises of more than 50 per cent for most pilots over that time period.

The airline managed to cap its flight cancellations at just 18 as it prepared for the possible work stoppage.

The labour dispute would have marked the third strike in 1 1/2 years in Canada’s airline sector, as workers sought to make gains that match those achieved elsewhere in North America amid the rising cost of living.