Air travellers across the country continued dealing with hundreds of grounded planes on Saturday as the federal government announced it was ordering a binding arbirtration in a labour strife between Air Canada and its 10,000 flight attendants on strike.
Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu said hours after the flight attendants initiated the strike just before 1 a.m. ET that she has also directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order both parties to resume operations. Though, she added, it could take between five to ten days for regular services to resume.
But in Ontario, passengers who had received notice that their flights were cancelled still showed up to Toronto Pearson International Airport in search of information from Air Canada about alternative options.
Tanya Baron said while fighting back tears that her family was trying to get home to Saskatoon and airline staff had yet to provide them with rebooking options and was giving her the runaround.
“They send us here, they send us there. They tell us to call a number where no human ever answers. I get hung up on. They tell us to check the website. There’s just no flights and no way to get home,” Baron said.
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Noel Nemeth, who was hoping to fly back home to Edmonton, said he also hasn’t gotten any answers on how he’s getting home.
“Patience is a virtue I guess,” he said. “I just have to wait until we can figure something out.”
Sandra Caputi, who was flying home to Thunder Bay, Ont., after spending a few weeks in Greece, was one of the lucky ones to grab a competitor flight from Porter at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport to take her home.
“I asked probably about 10 different people until I got the answer I wanted,” she said.
In Montreal, Bonnie Bradley says with no options available until Wednesday, she decided to book a car and drive home to Winnipeg after spending a 10-day holiday in Newfoundland.
“We’re booking a car and driving home,” she said in an interview at Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport.
She spent a night at a hotel on her own dime in Montreal after a return flight arrived late.
Dmytro Okopmyi, who is trying to get back to Halifax after spending a few days in Toronto with his partner, also said the airline hasn’t offered any options to rebook.
Even if he takes the option to refund his ticket and finds a new flight online, he said he’s worried that the cost to book a new last-minute ticket will be way more than the refund he’s owed.
“They tell us we can get a refund (for our tickets) which would probably be $200, but to buy new tickets is probably going to cost around $1,800,” he said.
Air Canada cancelled more than 600 flights over the past two days in preparation for a potential work stoppage
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