Air Canada begins flight cancellations, readies for complete grounding
Air Canada has started the process of cancelling flights in advance of a 72-hour strike by cabin crew staff that will leave its fleet “completely grounded’.
On August 14, 2025, Air Canada confirmed that 34 flights had been cancelled so far, with nearly 8,000 customers affected.
The airline also claims that close to 300 flight attendants, twice as many as usual, failed to report to work in the evening, resulting in a further 19 cancellations.
Around 10,000 flight attendants at Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge are set to begin strikes on August 16, 2025, at 01:00, local time.
In a message on the Air Canada website, the carrier said: “To provide our customers with certainty, we have begun a phased wind-down of most of our operations, to be completed over the next two days.”
Aug. 14, 2025 operational wind down impact due to the impending CUPE strike:Flights cancelled: 34People impacted: 7,946Plus 19 add’l cancellations & 3,145 people due to unplanned crew book-offs— Air Canada (@AirCanada) August 15, 2025 It is expected that most of Air Canada’s estimated 700 flights will be cancelled on August 15, 2025, unless a compromise can be reached between the airline and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
During a press conference on August 14, 2025, Mark Nasr, Chief Operations Officer for Air Canada, confirmed that “all flights will be paused by Saturday morning”.
Quoted by the Associated Press, Nasr said: “By tomorrow evening we expect to have cancelled flights affecting over 100,000 customers. By the time we get to 1 a.m. on Saturday morning we will be completely grounded.”
In a sign of the tensions between staff and Air Canada, the press conference was interrupted by Air Canada flight attendants holding signs that read ‘Unfair Canada’ and ‘Unpaid work won’t fly’.
On August 14, 2025, Air Canada also said that CUPE had rejected a proposal to “fly Canadians home”.
sockagphoto / Shutterstock.com“As a result, 25 000 additional passengers are going to be stranded abroad,” the airline claimed on social media.
Air Canada subsequently said that it will be still be repatriating flight attendants in the event of a strike, despite CUPE rejecting the agreement to fly Canadians home.
According to CUPE, Air Canada is refusing to increase flight attendant wages to match industry standards, inflation, or even federal minimum wage.
The union also noted that “flight attendants are only paid when the plane is moving, and work as many as 35 unpaid hours a week performing vital duties”.
On August 13, 2025, Wesley Lesosky, President of the Air Canada Component of CUPE, said: “For the past nine months, we have put forward solid, data-driven proposals on wages and unpaid work, all rooted in fairness and industry standards. Air Canada’s response to our proposals makes one thing clear: they are not interested in resolving these critical issues.”
The union added that Air Canada is “clearly banking on the federal government bailing them out by pre-empting flight attendants’ Charter-protected right to take job action”.
On August 14, 2025, Air Canada tried to clarify its offer to staff, which it insists includes a “38% increase in total compensation over four years”.
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Air Canada has started the process of cancelling flights in advance of a 72-hour strike by cabin crew…
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