Strike snarls Pearson flights

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If you’re flying out of Pearson airport today, check your flight status before you come to the airport. Dozens of flights have been cancelled or delayed today.

There are lineups at the Air Canada counter. There are people lined up. Several CHCH News spoke with had to rebook cancelled flights. It’s all because of a labour disruption between some airlines including air canada and their fuel providers.

According to airport officials only 10 of the 56 employees who refuel planes at the airport showed up to work today, creating created a major backlog of planes being stuck on the tarmac. The union representing the workers say the job action is because Air Canada and other airlines are dealing with another fuelling company in the fall, resulting in the loss of about 300 jobs.

We spoke to one passenger who is stuck on the WestJet plane on the tarmac. Ross De Angelis was supposed to head to the Dominican Republic. She said it wasn’t until they were on the plane they were told of the disruption.

“They told us when they were explaining that all of the Air Canada flights were cancelled but they weren’t sure about the WestJet ones yet.”

“When we were boarded we were 10 minutes late anyways, they were saying they were trying to get a message once aboard but they didn’t tell us about the dispute.”

Air Canada’s Peter Fitzpatrick says the airline has waived flight change fees for passengers who have to rebook.

“The airport is served by one company for all the airlines’ fuel, and the workers at that company have staged a job action. As a result of that there’s been some delays and cancellations because we can’t get the aircraft fuelled as quickly.”

“We’re working through it, we’ve brought in some extra agents to help rebook people; we’ve also put in place a flexible rebooking policy so customers that want to change their travel plans can do so at no cost. And we’ve got a few other measures we’ve taken to get the operation going as well as we can.”

CHCH’s Brittany Gogo is at Pearson talking to passengers; she will have much more tonight on the Evening News at 6.