Air Canada flight attendants vote to strike; A frequent flyer braces for travel chaos
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
175.69612
Summary
A strike by Air Canada flight attendants threatens to disrupt the airline's schedule and disrupt millions of dollars worth of flights across the world. Douglas Thompson has been flying back and forth between Saskatoon and Dubai as an oil worker for over 10 years. After hearing about the strike, supported by an almost unanimous vote, he can already envision the chaos that might ensue.
Transcript
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Douglas Thompson has been flying back and forth between Saskatoon and Dubai as an oil
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worker for over 10 years. As a frequent flyer, he has often used Air Canada to return to
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his hometown of Saskatoon. After hearing about the flight attendant's upcoming strike,
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supported by an almost unanimous vote, he can already envision the chaos that might ensue,
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not just for passengers, but for the airline itself.
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I guess every time you hear about a strike, you know, you hear about it and then all of a sudden
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you start looking at it and then all of a sudden they announce the tentative dates.
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Start going straight to your calendar and you cross your fingers and then all of a sudden you
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realize you're right in the thick of it. There's thousands of flights that have to be, like
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thousands of itineraries that have to be rescheduled. The real problem is going to be like the
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international flights because like those planes are huge and I don't know the flight attendants
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are going to say, okay, we're going to stop this route and I imagine they'll just stop the most
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profitable routes. Once they do that, they have to rebook like three, 400 people. So it's, and then
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that puts them onto the other airlines and the other airlines, they've only got maybe a couple dozen
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seats empty. There's going to be a lot of, uh, like tension at the airport.
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I support the flight attendants. Um, they've got a thankless job. Uh, I see the stuff they have to put
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up with and I wouldn't want to do their job. And so I, I support them. I think they're, uh, and then
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the other thing with all the, the way that the airlines are treating passengers, um, I can only imagine,
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uh, how they're treating their staff. The next time we're going to threaten to strike, the airline
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will remember 2025 when they did strike and it costs X number of dollars and they know that,
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well, they know that they're going to follow through because if they don't strike, then the
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airlines will know that, okay, they don't have that support to strike, you know, all talk.
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So unfortunately they have to, they have to proceed.