Tens of thousands of summer travelers were left scrambling for options as Air Canada flight attendants walked off the job early Saturday after failed talks to resolve a bitter dispute with management over their wages.
The airline said it had canceled 700 flights, expected to affect about 130,000 passengers daily. But the shutdown of Canada’s dominant airline had ripple effects well beyond Canada’s border.
At Toronto Pearson International Airport on Saturday morning, a few dozen Air Canada employees were picketing in front of the departures terminal. Inside, hundreds of people whose flights had been canceled sought answers from airline employees about alternative travel arrangements and what their rights were.
The airline has been sending cancellation and rebooking emails, many travelers said, and had asked people not to show up at airports. At Pearson’s departure and arrivals terminals, the atmosphere was calm and the crowds smaller than usual, even as people tried to find other ways to complete their journeys.
Rob Van Helden of the Netherlands had been on vacation in Costa Rica as part of a group of 16 family friends — eight of them children — and was flying to Amsterdam through Toronto when the strike began.
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