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Thousands of Air Canada flyers are facing another day of travel disruption on Monday, after striking Air Canada flight attendants defied a federal back-to-work order and abruptly halted the airline’s plans to resume operations.
It comes after travellers in Canada and abroad described chaotic attempts to secure flights on Sunday while the airline’s fleet of hundreds of planes remained grounded.
Lila Rousseaux, who was scheduled to fly home with her family from Zurich to Toronto on Sunday, told CBC News she spent all of Saturday glued to her phone for news about whether her flight would be cancelled.
At 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, she was informed it was.
“I spent one-and-a-half hours on the phone with the agent … lots of turbulence,” Rousseaux said.
“There was a lot of inflexibility in terms of what can be done,” she said, adding that her suggestions to take a train to Amsterdam to catch a plane, or to fly directly to the U.S. before driving across the border, were rebuffed by the agent.
Bob McDowell is stranded in Amsterdam and said Air Canada ‘completely abandoned’ its passengers after the airline’s flight attendants went on strike.
Rousseaux said she finally booked an “awful” overnight flight to Atlanta, lamenting that she is no longer being seated with her children. “The distress in my family is very acute,” she said.
Air Canada cancels plans to resume operations as flight attendants defy back-to-work order
Ottawa moved to intervene in the labour dispute on Saturday, less than 12 hours after the strike and lockout took effect, with federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu saying she was invoking Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to ask the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to send the two sides to binding arbitration and to order the airline and its flight attendants back to work in the meantime.
The Montreal-based airline subsequently announced early Sunday that it planned to resume flights in the evening, but just hours later, the union representing more than 10,000 flight attendants said in a statement that members would remain on strike — scuttling those plans and prompting Air Canada to cancel some 240 flights.
Air Canada says it plans to restart flights Monday evening after striking flight attendants defied the federal government’s back-to-work order Sunday morning. For Lila Rousseaux, a longtime Air Canada customer, the weekend work stoppage has resulted in inflexibility from the airline as she and her family try to reroute their way home.
More than 30 students from across the country were in Seoul, South Korea, this past week to compete in the 2025 FIRA Roboworld Cup when their flights were cancelled, leaving the group representing Canada stranded thousands of kilometres away.
Samia Karimi, director of the Canadian National Robotic Society, said the team won 15 awards at the competition but spirits plummeted quickly over the weekend after realizing they no longer had a flight home.
“Right now the happiness of the awards has [turned] into sadness [over] the delays,” Karimi told CBC News Network on Monday.
“Our kids are too tired because they competed seven days — day and night.”
City councillor Amanda Collucci, who joined the team to receive the flag from South Korea to represent the 2026 FIRA Roboworld Cup in Markham, Ont., said they have yet to hear word from Air Canada about rebooking flights after having to extend their stay in Seoul.
“When we’re talking about travelling with a group of 50 people, it’s not easy to just rearrange travel [plans] for every single [person],” Colluci said.
At Vancouver International Airport, passengers stood in long lines to get the latest updates on their delayed and cancelled flights, as workers outside demonstrated with signs reading, “Unpaid work won’t fly.”
Chi Ehis told The Canadian Press she is having to pay an extra $2,000 to meet her family in Florida for a vacation after her flight was cancelled Sunday morning.
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Instead of flying straight from Vancouver, she is now taking a bus to Seattle before catching another, pricier flight.
“I can’t scream. I have to just figure out what to do,” Ehis said, adding her plane ticket cost $1,500.
More than 100,000 travellers had their plans upended by the Air Canada flight attendants’ strike, forcing people to attempt to find often expensive alternative arrangements for honeymoons, surgeries and other events.
In Toronto, Khalid Muhammadi told CBC News he flew in from Dubai en route to Edmonton, but is now stuck at Pearson International Airport.
Muhammadi voiced frustrations with the federal government for not resolving the labour dispute. “You knew a strike was coming … do your job.”
People sit with their luggage at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Sunday. Thousands of travellers scrambled to rebook cancelled flights after striking Air Canada flight attendants defied a federal back-to-work order. (Kyaw Soe Oo/Reuters)
Air Canada has said passengers whose flights are cancelled will be offered a full refund or the opportunity to change their travel plans without a fee.
However, it said that under Canada’s airline passenger protection regulations, customers are not eligible for compensation for expenses incurred during travel delays deemed outside the airline’s control.
Could federal legislation have eased a key sticking point in the Air Canada dispute?
“Customers in Canada are not eligible for compensation for delayed or cancelled flights, meals, hotels or other incidental expenses for situations outside the carrier’s control, such as a labour disruption,” the airline said.
Air Canada said in a news release that its flights would resume Monday evening, although a notice on its booking page said all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flights were cancelled until further notice.
Source: cbc
