With more than 500 Air Canada flights set to be cancelled by Friday as a potential strike looms, local officials said it’s unclear how the cancellations, or any sort of prolonged labour disruption, would impact tourism in the capital.
During a press conference Thursday, Air Canada chief operations officer Mark Nasr said “several dozen” flights scheduled for Thursday and about 500 more on Friday have been cancelled.
The cancellations are in response to a planned labour disruption by CUPE, which represents 10,000 flight attendants for Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge. Strike action is expected to begin at 1 a.m. this Saturday if a deal isn’t reached. In a press release, Air Canada said it has “begun a phased wind-down of most of the operations, to be completed over two days.”
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About 130,000 customers flying to 200 destinations across 65 countries are expected to be affected, according to Air Canada.
Krista Kealey, vice-president of communications and public affairs for the Ottawa International Airport Authority, said the authority is looking into how the disruptions will impact passengers flying through Ottawa.
“We don’t know how this will impact YOW, there are so many variables that will come to bear,” she said in an email to OBJ, adding that decisions are made by Air Canada. “We will watch developments carefully and provide the local Air Canada team with any support they require.”
Kealey said passengers should check the status of their flights in case of any changes. YOW, she added, will be posting operation updates to social media.
“We respect the labour relations process and hope they can get back negotiations and come to an agreement as soon as possible,” she said in her email.
Despite concerns that trade tensions would impact passenger volumes to and from the United States, Ottawa has seen a “relatively stable” number of passengers crossing the border, according to recently released airport data. Meanwhile, domestic and overseas travel continues to increase.
But as the tourism season winds down, it’s unclear if a strike would impact the airport’s ability to match pre-pandemic numbers.
Passenger volumes have not fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels, falling short last year with a total of 4.6 million passengers throughout 2024, compared to 5.1 million in 2019.
In the first six months of 2025, almost 2.4 million people have flown through Ottawa, slightly ahead of the total number of passengers recorded during the same time last year.
Ottawa Tourism said it’s keeping an eye on the situation to see what kind of impacts it can expect on the broader local tourism sector.
“We are monitoring what is unfolding with the Air Canada job action with concern for the implications to tourism in our city,” said Jérôme Miousse, director of public affairs, in an email. “We are hopeful that the issue will find resolution so that we can keep working on the momentum we have built through an excellent summer season.”
With files from The Canadian Press
