Today, Air Canada flight attendants filed a strike notice beginning at 12:58 a.m. this Saturday, August 16, 2025. The Canadian airline retaliated with a “lockout” notice for the same day, starting at 1:30am.
What does this mean for those returning to Montreal from vacation this weekend – or for those leaving the island to fly back home?
Here’s all we know…
The strike – who, why?
Some 10,000 people work as flight attendants for Air Canada. To ensure that their rights are represented and managed, they have a union, which for several weeks has been in negotiations with the airline over the revision of its flight attendants’ wages.
Yesterday, Air Canada proposed a 17.2% increase over four years. According to the flight attendants’ union, this is not enough to cover inflation in the cost of living. A spokeswoman for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) speaks of a wage that is 34% to 38% below that of competing airlines;“a flight attendant starting at Air Canada with a full-time schedule of 75 hours a month earns $1,952 a month before taxes“. With this salary, flight attendants are living below the poverty line.
Flight attendants are also demanding pay for 35 hours of work per month – before and after the flight – which are not paid by the airline.
Negotiations have been at a standstill for over eight months, and now the union has called a strike to force Air Canada to raise its wages.
The strike is a work stoppage for flight attendants – and will obviously disrupt flights on Saturday August 16 and in the days – if not weeks – that follow.
Lockout, cancelled and delayed flights
The “lockout” announced by Air Canada, which will also begin at dawn on Saturday August 16, means that the airline will cease operations almost completely. Planes will be grounded.
Starting tomorrow, Thursday August 14, Air Canada will reduce the volume of its flights, so that the shutdown of its operations will take place gradually, until the lockout on Saturday.
Cancelled flights, delayed flights and chaos await us all.
What will happen to travelers affected by the strike and lockout?
Air Canada will offer travelers with flights scheduled between August 15 and 18 (even those with non-modifiable tickets) to change their tickets free of charge for the period between August 21 and September 12. Otherwise, the airline will have to offer a ticket refund.
For travelers located (or stuck) in Europe, hotel and car rental refunds are also possible, according to Air Canada.
According to Jacob Charbonneau, co-founder and director of Vol en retard, interviewed on ICI RDI, Air Canada must offer a replacement flight on another airline to those unable to postpone their trip.
For those who have to reschedule or cancel their flights this week, we’ll have to move quickly and be prepared to grit our teeth.
All the best!