Air Canada strike expected to begin early Saturday morning

A threatened strike could shut down cross-country and international flights from Canada’s largest airline.

Air Canada says it’s expecting flight attendants to go ahead with their plan to walk out just after midnight Saturday.

Unless there’s some surprise development the strike is set to start at 1 a.m. Saturday morning and as of Friday evening there are no signs of any moves toward heading off the strike.

At Pearson Airport’s Air Canada terminal Friday, travellers were rushing to get on their planes before a strike starts.

The airline has already begun cancelling flights in the face of the potential walkout.

“We’re gradually winding down our operations because of the labour disruption we’re experiencing,” says Peter Fitzgerald, a spokesperson from Air Canada.

“To do that, what we are doing is cancelling flights. Yesterday it was about 40. Today it’s a heavier day with about 500 flights cancelled by the end of the day and then tomorrow we won’t be able to operate.”

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Air Canada says the strike will mean 700 flights cancelled every day affecting 130,000 travellers.

Leaving passengers like Mohit Barve scrambling to find a flight to New Delhi.

“I had an original flight from Montreal to Delhi the day before yesterday. They booked me for today and they’re still saying the flight is not going to fly from Montreal,” Barve says.

Other folks are trying to get home to England for shoulder surgery.

“And he’s getting an operation soon. We need to be home for his operation. I have an operation in seven days,” says travellers at the airport.

And another man is starting a new job in Winnipeg.

“I start working next week. I was taking a little trip. It would inconvenience me a lot, honestly, probably lead to a lot of money coming out of my pocket.”

READ MORE: Some Air Canada flights are being cancelled today as clock ticks toward work stoppage

In their dispute over a new contract, the airline says its offer would make the flight attendants the best paid in Canada.

“You would add on our offer of 38 per cent,” says Arielle Meloul from Air Canada.

The union says the wage offer is only eight per cent for the first year and would leave some flight attendants among the working poor.

“We want to be seen, we want to be heard, we want to be valued for the work that we do,” says a woman from the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

While Air Canada is preparing to park its planes for the duration of the strike.

If there is a strike the airport says there will be activity tomorrow at the airlines terminal for Air Canada’s smaller airlines.

But not for Air Canada or Air Canada Rouge.

READ MORE: Why Air Canada flight attendants may strike and what it means for travellers

And the airport is preparing to help passengers impacted.

“There’s a lot of planning that’s been put in place for a number of weeks to make sure we’re ready for an event like this,” says Sean Davidson, a spokesperson from Toronto Pearson International Airport.

“We have extra staff here in the terminal to be on hand to assist passengers, if they have questions about where to go and where to find answers.”

But the airport says Air Canada is ultimately responsible for ticketing and booking.

The airline made a last-minute request to the federal government for binding arbitration in its dispute with the union. But that didn’t go anywhere.

The union wouldn’t go along with it and instead told the government not to interfere with negotiations.

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