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People’s WestJet flights were up in the air Friday — but in a good way.
The airline averted a strike after reaching a last-minute deal with its pilots’ association overnight.
Samuel Nachtigall was getting ready to board his flight to Calgary from Regina on Friday morning, so he could catch a flight to Montreal for basic training this weekend.
Nachtigall told 980 CJME he was relieved to find out the strike wasn’t happening. He said he didn’t have a backup plan if his flight got cancelled.
“It was kind of up in the air there for a while and I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do there, but it was good to see the news … (Thursday) night that the strike was over,” Nachtigall said.
Michael McKinney said he didn’t even know the strike had been averted. He showed up at the airport anyway to board a flight that was originally supposed to take off Thursday.
“Good deal,” he said after finding out the strike wasn’t taking place. “(The flight) was just changed because of the strike, as far as I knew.”
The president and CEO of the Regina Airport Authority was also relieved.
“This potential labour disruption was going to have massive impacts all across Canada and even the announcement of it was causing concerns, as it would for future booking and confidence in travel generally,” James Bogusz told the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Friday.
However, Bogusz also said that since it looked like the labour disruption was going to happen, WestJet already proactively cancelled some flights on its mainline fleet.
“These are those larger 737s and 787s,” Bogusz added. “We do have a few of those jets going to Vancouver or Toronto, for example.”
He reiterated that was the main reason why Friday morning’s flight from Regina to Toronto and Friday afternoon’s flight from Regina to Vancouver had been cancelled.
Fortunately, Bogusz confirmed all WestJet Encore flights were still operating on time.
“Those connections beyond (Calgary, Winnipeg and Edmonton) are still impacted (Friday morning), but hopefully they’ll clean it up soon,” he added. “We’re seeing that later (Friday), most of those larger planes are operating normally, but not until then.”
Bogusz said he’s expecting the upcoming Victoria Day weekend to be one of the busiest weekends for the airport since the pandemic started.
“We’re really happy to see this,” he said.
CJ Dushinski, the vice-president of business development and service quality with the Saskatoon airport, said WestJet cancelled flights out of the Bridge City on Thursday in preparation for the potential strike.
On Friday, three flights to Calgary and Toronto were cancelled by the airline. Dushinski said those flights will likely remain cancelled, but the rest of the WestJet flights were set to fly out as normal.
“In Saskatoon, we weren’t too heavily impacted,” she said, adding she was expecting to see more cancellations.
“At this point we’re feeling pretty confident that things will recover quickly. The airline seems to be working quickly to resolve the issue across the network.”
She noted rolling delays could still be possible due to issues from other airports.
For those travelling this weekend, Dushinski reminded passengers to stay up to date on the airline’s situation and to watch for flight status updates through the airport’s website or directly with the airline.
As for travellers whose flights were cancelled by WestJet leading up to the deadline, passenger rights advocate Gabor Lukacs said the airline is required to provide either alternate transportation within 48 hours or a refund — and the choice is up to the passenger.
“Do (airline officials) do it? Unfortunately, WestJet is known to break the law in this regard,” Lukacs said. “It’s one of the most problematic areas where WestJet is breaking the law.”
It all comes down to whether a labour issue falls under WestJet’s control, and if the cancellations were even directly caused by it.
“I don’t think that the cancellation was happening because of a labour dispute,” Lukacs said. “Pre-emptively cancelling flights is a weak explanation for that.”
Lukacs encouraged passengers to file a claim because if the cancellations are deemed to be within WestJet’s control, people are entitled to compensation.
— With files from 650 CKOM’s Mia Holowaychuk, 980 CJME’s Andrew Shepherd and The Canadian Press