Plane, bus or car? Travellers scramble for solutions after Air Canada strike ends

Noha Zaher and Ibraheem Sabry still hadn’t made it home to Ottawa despite enduring nearly 60 hours of travel chaos and confusion after their vacation abroad.

The couple and their two kids spent Tuesday at Toronto’s Pearson airport after they were denied boarding twice in Cairo because their flights with two different airlines were overbooked as a result of Air Canada’s flight cancellations.

The three-day strike by Air Canada flight attendants may be over, but the family was among thousands of passengers still scrambling for solutions as the airline’s flights began resuming.

Not all of the answers involved Air Canada. Or flights.

After finally making their way to Toronto, Zaher and Sabry resolved to take a bus to Ottawa.

“We were, of course, frustrated,” said Zaher. “I had work on Monday, so I missed two days of work after three weeks of vacation.”

For the Team Saskatchewan U15 boys baseball team, the workaround to get to a national tournament in Summerside, P.E.I., involved WestJet tickets, generous parents and flights to three different Atlantic airports.

Head coach Blair Beck said Air Canada cancelled their Tuesday evening flight, but players’ parents who were booked on the rival carrier stepped up to the plate.

“The parents and grandparents gave up 19 flights and we were able to get the kids and coaches leaving (Tuesday and Wednesday),” Beck said. “It’s just pretty amazing that it all worked out.”

Beck said the team will miss the opening ceremonies for the Ray Carter Cup Championships but will get to play their first game Thursday.

He said the players and coaches will be on flights landing in Moncton, Halifax and Charlottetown. Tournament organizers will pick them up.

“It’s incredible. I didn’t have much confidence we were going to find a way,” Beck said.

“I don’t know for sure (if the parents will make it). My guess is there’s a mass scramble going on right now.”

News of the tentative deal between Air Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees came early Tuesday morning, and the airline said it planned to operate more than half of its scheduled flights by the end of the day.

The airline has cautioned that a return to full, regular service would take seven to 10 days as aircraft and crew are out of position. Some flights will continue to be cancelled until the schedule is stabilized, Air Canada said, and only customers with confirmed bookings whose flights are shown as operating should go to the airport.

For Maxime Vidal, the resumed flights can’t come soon enough. He said he and his family were supposed to fly to Paris from Toronto, but the flight was cancelled and they’ve heard no word yet from the airline on when they’ll be rebooked.

“We have a life in France and we have to go back to work,” he said. “It’s going to be complicated a little bit if we don’t have a flight for tomorrow.”

Steve Marcotte said he was on vacation in Ontario for a week with his wife and granddaughter and they were set to return home to Newfoundland before their flight was cancelled.

They decided to book last-minute flights to Halifax instead to visit his son, then fly back to Newfoundland from there — a plan that will cost them thousands of dollars, he said.

“It’s very stressful,” Marcotte said. “I want to go home.”

The federal government intervened in the strike on Saturday morning, invoking Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to force Air Canada and the union into binding arbitration. The Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered flight attendants to return to work Sunday.

Union officials defied that order, leading the board to state Monday that the strike was unlawful even as the union said it would press ahead.

The airline and the union met through the night with a federal mediator before reaching a tentative agreement. The deal will be brought to more than 10,000 members of the Air Canada component of CUPE for a vote.

The union said it must advise members to “fully co-operate with resumption of operations.”

Air Canada estimated Monday that some 500,000 customers’ flights had been cancelled since the strike began.

At Vancouver’s airport, the queue to scan boarding passes included Kathy Keogh from Ontario, whose “amazing” Alaska cruise concluded with the cancellation of her flight home from Vancouver on Monday.

She spent the day bracing herself for a long drive home, after debating whether to pay for a costly hotel stay of indeterminate length.

“Yesterday was like, what are we going to do? And then you have the other airlines that were price gouging. It was disgusting,” said Keogh.

“We were going to rent a car and drive back. It was the cheapest option.”

She said she woke to the “exciting” news that the strike was over and she was booked on a Tuesday afternoon flight.

Terry Carriere and friend Patrick Robillard had spent two weeks in Whistler, B.C., mountain biking and enjoying what Robillard called the “paradise view.”

Things went downhill in a different way when they arrived at the airport on Monday to find their flight back to Quebec City cancelled.

They were waiting in line at the Air Canada desk at Vancouver’s airport hoping for a rebooking.

“I said (to my boss) it’s Air Canada. I can’t do anything,” said Carriere, who said he was due back at work on Thursday. “I don’t know when we can be at work.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 19, 2025.

Maan Alhmidi, Rianna Lim, Jeremy Simes and Nono Shen, The Canadian Press