Hundreds of WestJet flights have been cancelled after the airline's flight attendants launched a strike just after midnight on Sunday, stranding passengers across Canada and abroad during one of the year's busiest travel weekends.

WestJet said it had cancelled 600 flights since Friday following a 72-hour strike notice from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents 4,287 flight attendants, and the airline's subsequent 72-hour lockout notice. WestJet and CUPE were continuing contract negotiations in Calgary on Sunday.

Major Canadian airports have advised affected passengers not to seek help in person and instead to deal directly with WestJet.

Passengers report mounting costs and confusion

Travellers described scrambling to rebook flights, extend hotel stays, and secure rental cars after their WestJet flights were cancelled with little notice.

One passenger travelling home from a Caribbean vacation said he expected to be out of pocket by thousands of dollars after booking a separate flight and extending his accommodation. Another traveller, stranded in Calgary with his family en route to Tokyo, said his family stood to lose thousands of dollars in prepaid hotel costs if a rebooked flight were also cancelled.

John Gradek, a faculty lecturer in aviation management at McGill University, said disrupted crew and aircraft positioning meant WestJet's Monday flights were unlikely to depart as scheduled, even if the dispute were resolved on Sunday. He said flights would likely not resume before late Tuesday afternoon at the earliest.

Dispute centres on ground-duty pay

At the heart of the dispute is WestJet's "credit hour" pay system, which the union says leaves flight attendants uncompensated for work performed on the ground before flights depart. WestJet has said the system combines flight time, ground duties, and delays into a single, higher hourly rate applied across the workday.

A similar dispute led to a work stoppage by Air Canada flight attendants less than a year earlier. That dispute ended with pay increases for workers, but only after Ottawa invoked Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to order employees back to work—an order they initially defied.

Labour experts say the federal government may again intervene if the WestJet strike extends beyond the long weekend, though some cautioned that such a move could weaken confidence in collective bargaining.

Canadian Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu called the strike a "disappointing development" in a social media post on Sunday, saying government mediators were working to help the two sides reach an agreement.

The federal government has so far not indicated whether it will intervene in this case, but questions loom about the possibility.

Source: CBC News