Air Canada’s operations are slowly coming back online after a three-day strike by flight attendants left much of its network at a standstill. The walkout, which began early Saturday morning, forced the airline to ground all flights operated by Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge until service partially resumed Tuesday afternoon.
The restart has not been seamless. The airline has warned that it could take up to a week or more before schedules are fully stabilized, as aircraft and crews remain out of place. Travellers should expect continued cancellations and delays until operations are back to normal.
By all estimates, the strike disrupted as many as 130,000 passengers per day, with over 700 flights canceled in its initial two days – a scale that has rattled both passengers and insurers alike.
“This strike clearly has had significant implications for travelers. It has been a massive disruption for hundreds of thousands of travelers, according to reports from Air Canada,” he said.
“For the industry itself, any major travel disruption will create a lot of noise. In this case, though, initially a lot of that activity has been related to customer inquiries – customers just wondering what protection they have, what coverage they have through their various insurance policies.”
From an insurance perspective, Keon noted that it is still too early to measure the full financial impact. Because Air Canada is the “first payer” in these situations, the airline is responsible for issuing refunds or offering alternative travel arrangements. Travel insurance does play a role, he said, particularly for additional expenses, but most of the immediate burden lies with the airline itself.
“As far as catastrophic losses, I don’t think this will be that type of situation for travel insurance providers, at least not initially,” Keon said.
Still, he expects the disruption to spark renewed attention on the role of strike coverage in travel policies.
“I think it will,” Keon said. “Any time there’s an event like this, there’s always a spike in awareness. Whatever the most recent major event has been, that becomes the top-of-mind concern – for travelers, for brokers, for everyone involved.”
Hopefully, he added, it also means that people will take a moment to review their policy wording, to understand what it actually covers, rather than just assuming.
“Depending on the policy, there may or may not be benefits that provide protection in these scenarios.”
That heightened awareness, he added, presents an opportunity for education across the industry – both for brokers and distributors, and for travelers themselves.
When asked whether airline strikes could become a more prominent underwriting concern in Canada going forward, Keon emphasized that labour disruptions are hardly new to the travel sector.
“Airline strikes are nothing new for the industry,” he said. “This most recent strike just highlights how disruptive they can be. Given that Canada has very strong air passenger protection regulations, the responsibility for taking care of affected passengers ultimately falls on the airline. That said, travel insurance providers will no doubt assess the frequency and impact of such strikes more closely, and adjust their underwriting strategies accordingly to ensure policies remain relevant and provide adequate protection for travelers."
The strike itself stemmed from a long-running dispute between Air Canada and its cabin crew union over compensation and working conditions. A key breakthrough in negotiations was the agreement to pay flight attendants for pre-flight duties – tasks like boarding preparation and safety checks that, until now, were largely unpaid despite being essential to passenger safety. That concession marked a significant win for the union and brought Canada in line with practices in other jurisdictions.
The agreement also included wage increases and other improvements, ultimately paving the way for the three-day strike to end after both sides reached a tentative deal. Still, the labour action underscored just how disruptive disputes in the airline sector can be. In addition to grounding flights and stranding travellers across North America, the strike triggered ripple effects for airports, tour operators, and insurers.
