New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute suggests that Air Canada’s reputation appears to be rapidly losing altitude amid a battle between the company and unionized flight attendants.
The flight attendants went on strike Saturday warning amid a labour dispute that revolves around whether in-flight service crews should be compensated for work they do before their flights push back from the gate, such as safety checks, boarding passengers, or deplaning after landing.
Air Canada is offering flight attendants half of their hourly rates to do this work; the union is demanding their full hourly amount.
For their part, a majority of Canadians are calling on the airline to pay up before the planes tilt up and compensate service crew for the full breadth of their flight duties.
An independent, self-commissioned and self-funded poll (released Friday before employees went on strike) found three-in-five (59%) say that Air Canada providing full hourly wages for all aspects of the flight attendants’ work is most important to them, while the rest (41%) say keeping airfares low should be the priority.
Notably, however, more frequent fliers – those who have taken to the skies three times or more in the last year – are evenly split on the matter, with half (51%) siding with flights attendants demands, and the other half more focused on not seeing the increased costs of such compensation passed along to them.
One-third of Canadians (34%) say they don’t want to see airfare increases, even if it means boosting flight attendants’ compensation, while three-in-10 (29%) would accept a price increase of less than 5% on their ticket. Just one-in-six (14%) say they would pay 5% or more if it meant flight attendants were paid as soon as they clocked in for their shifts.
Three-quarters (74%) support federal legislation to require airlines to pay employees when they report for their shift as scheduled as more than four-in-five (84%) describe the current conditions as “unfair”.
Regardless of where they stand on the labour dispute – and noting that hating airlines is something of a societal pastime – half say this conflict has damaged their own opinions of Air Canada. Where one-in-five say their views of the company have “worsened a lot” as a result of the conflict and uncertainty.
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