Canada’s second-largest airline is offering customers the opportunity to make changes free of charge as WestJet’s flight attendants’ strike threatens summer travel. The Calgary-based airline is allowing one-time changes to bookings without an additional fee. The flexible travel policy is for reservations between July 30 and August 4.

WestJet flight attendants are threatening to strike as soon as August 2; this comes after the union and the airline have been unable to come to a new agreement. Earlier this month, the flight attendants who are represented by CUPE Local 8125 voted 99.4% in favor of a strike, where 4,400 union members could walk off the job.

WestJet Flight Attendants Strike: Impact on Public Holiday Travel

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Flexible travel is offered between July 30 and August 4, so passengers can make a one-time change or cancellation to current bookings without penalty. This is to provide travelers with greater flexibility over these uncertain dates. Given that summer travel is in full swing, the airline has updated its change policy for these dates, with the Civic Weekend, a public holiday scheduled for the first weekend in August.

WestJet has confirmed that its regional flights with WestJet Encore, where travel is on a Bombardier Q400 aircraft, are not affected by the strike, along with those who are booked on codeshare services. The airline has shared the below statement in relation to the upcoming strike as reported by Global News:

“WestJet remains actively engaged in negotiations and is fully prepared to make meaningful improvements that work for cabin crew members while balancing the future sustainability of WestJet. We are optimistic we can arrive at an agreement.”

Cabin Crew Compensation Explained

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WestJet and the CUPE union are currently in negotiations for a new collective agreement; these are important to ensure that the compensation received by cabin crew reflects the economic environment and work demands for cabin crew. Last September, CUPE issued its first notice to bargain with WestJet mainline, and this was the beginning of negotiations. The current collective agreement expired in December last year.

As bargaining between the two parties has continued to be a stalemate, CUPE issued its notice of dispute with the Minister of Labour in April, which resulted in conciliators being brought in by May to support the bargaining process. Fast forward to July, and the airline and CUPE are still unable to agree on new terms, which has resulted in threatened strike action. Timeline below as per WestJet:

Overall, the collective agreement as of July 23 has had 38 articles agreed in principle, while a further 29 are still being negotiated between the two parties.

Canada’s Second Largest Airline

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WestJet is the country’s second-largest airline and is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. The carrier was founded in 1994 and began operations in 1996. It was launched as a low-cost carrier, and over the years has grown to an airline that dominates travel in the country’s Western provinces, while also operating an extensive summer network to and from Europe.

The airline is not a member of any major airline alliance; however, it does have close ties with several SkyTeam carriers, through investment by Delta Air Lines (which owns 12.7% of WestJet), Korean Air (10%), and Air France KLM (2.3%). To date, the airline has several subsidiaries including Sunwing Vacations Group, WestJet Cargo, and WestJet Encore.

Across the carrier’s fleet, it operates more than 150 aircraft to in excess of 100 destinations. This coming August long weekend, the airline is hoping that the collective bargaining progress is able to proceed to limit the disruption that its flight attendant strike could cause. The airline’s additional flexibility will ensure that, should the strike go ahead, passengers can adjust their travel plans without penalty during this period.