Air Canada, flight attendant union reach deal to end strike

Air Canada and a union for 10,000 flight attendants reached a deal Tuesday to end a strike that started over the weekend, impacting hundreds of thousands of travelers.

The parties announced the deal after they resumed talks late Monday for the first time since the strike began on Saturday, The according to the Associated Press. The strike has affected about 130,000 travelers a day at the peak of the summer travel season.

Air Canada, the country's largest airline, said that flights would begin restarting Tuesday evening.

The strike began after the union turned down the airline's request to enter into government-directed arbitration. The union said that the deal will guarantee its members are paid for the work they perform while planes are on the ground, one of the major issues of the strike.

“Unpaid work is over. We have reclaimed our voice and our power,” the union said in a statement. “When our rights were taken away, we stood strong, we fought back – and we secured a tentative agreement that our members can vote on.”

Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau said restarting a major airline is a complex undertaking, and that regular service may require seven to 10 days. Some flights will be canceled until the schedule is stabilized.

“Full restoration may require a week or more, so we ask for our customers’ patience and understanding over the coming days,” Rousseau said in a statement.

A mediator helped the two sides reach the deal. The airline said mediation discussions “were begun on the basis that the union commit to have the airline’s 10,000 flight attendants immediately return to work.”

The ratification of the deal has yet to be completed, but a strike or lockout is not possible during this time, Air Canada said.

The Canada Industrial Relations Board had declared on Monday that the strike was illegal, ordering the flight attendants back on the job. However, the union said it would defy the directive, and also ignored a weekend order to submit to binding arbitration and end the strike by Sunday afternoon.

Air Canada operates around 700 flights per day, and estimated on Monday that 500,000 customers would be affected by flight cancellations.

Since Thursday, when the carrier began gradually suspending its operations ahead of the strike, Air Canada had called off at least 1,219 domestic flights and 1,339 international flights, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.