WestJet began cancelling flights Friday evening and had already cut 86 Saturday flights by 11 a.m. MT as it prepared for a possible strike or lockout involving flight attendants. The airline said it was reducing its schedule to avoid larger disruptions if the work stoppage starts this weekend.
The move puts the Westjet Flight Attendant Union Strike search term at the centre of an immediate travel problem, not a distant labor dispute. The Canadian Union of Public Employees represents about 4,400 WestJet flight attendants, and the 72-hour strike notice it issued met a 72-hour lockout notice from WestJet. If the two sides do not reach an agreement, the earliest a strike or lockout could begin is Sunday at 12:01 a.m. MT.
WestJet described the schedule cut as an organized take-down of its network in a news release Friday evening. In practical terms, that means the cancellations are starting before any work stoppage has begun, a deliberate effort to keep the airline from stranding customers and aircraft all at once if operations are halted over the weekend.
The dispute centres largely on pay for work done on the ground, including boarding passengers, completing safety checks and managing delays. Barry Eidlin said WestJet flight attendants are generally paid only while an aircraft is in the air, even though delays have become increasingly common. That gap has become the flash point as the deadline nears.
The immediate question is no longer whether the airline will be disrupted, but whether the cancellations stop at 86 flights or deepen into a full-scale shutdown after the notice period expires. If there is no deal by Sunday at 12:01 a.m. MT, the airline’s preventive cutbacks will turn into the first phase of a much larger stoppage.
