Air Transat passengers breathed a sigh of relief Tuesday evening after the company reached a tentative deal with its pilot union, narrowly avoiding a strike on the cusp of the holiday travel period.
Transat A.T. Inc., which owns the leisure airline, found common ground with the Air Line Pilots Association just eight hours before the union’s strike deadline. The travel company immediately sought to start ramping up sun flights after cancelling at least 18 trips scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday in a precautionary move that affected thousands of travellers.
Neither the company nor the union representing some 750 Air Transat pilots released details of the tentative agreement, which the membership will vote on in the coming days.
Transat CEO Annick Guérard said the airline would have “greatly preferred” to avoid the threat of a work stoppage.
“We are aware that this period has created significant uncertainty, and we extend our sincerest apologies to our customers whose flights were disrupted in recent days,” she said in a statement Tuesday evening.
“Our priority now is to quickly restore our operations and deliver on our commitment to provide service that meets our standards.”
The Air Line Pilots Association sought a new agreement that boosts wages, job security and quality of life following big gains for aviators at Air Canada and WestJet over the past two years.
Bradley Small, who heads the union’s Air Transat contingent, said the existing 10-year-old pilot contract lags behind industry standards in Canada and North America.
“We believe this new agreement meets the needs of today’s profession, consistent with collective agreements other ALPA-represented pilot groups are signing with their employers,” Small said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Transat’s flight schedule was severely disrupted this week after it began to cancel flights in anticipation of a labour standoff.
By Tuesday afternoon, the Montreal-based company had suspended routes to sun destinations in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Peru and Spain as well as London and Paris. All 18 flights were slated to either take off or land in Toronto or Montreal.
Air Transat said it had arranged seven extra flights Monday and Tuesday to ferry some customers back from their vacations early.
The timing could hardly have been tougher for an airline known for catering to sun-thirsty travellers in the winter months.
“The union and pilots know this is a very difficult time for airlines (to halt). This is where they make a lot of their money,” said Geraint Harvey, an employment relations professor at Western University.
“The aircraft is full. If you have to cancel those flights, that is incredibly problematic.”
The carrier’s active fleet of nearly 40 planes carries tens of thousands of passengers on more than 500 flights each week.
The Air Line Pilots Association issued a 72-hour strike notice on Sunday.
Transat responded that cancellations would ramp up ahead of a potential strike or lockout, which could have kicked off as early as 3 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
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