Reuters

Air Canada’s unionized flight attendants reached an agreement with the country’s largest carrier on Tuesday, ending the first strike by its cabin crew in 40 years that had upended travel plans for hundreds of thousands of passengers.

The strike that lasted nearly four days had led the airline that serves about 130,000 people daily to withdraw its third quarter and full-year earnings guidance.

Shares of Air Canada rose 4% in early trading. They have lost 14% of their value so far this year.

The carrier said it would gradually resume operations and a full restoration may require a week or more, while the union said it has completed mediation with the airline and its low-cost affiliate Air Canada Rouge.

“The Strike has ended. We have a tentative agreement we will bring forward to you,” the Canadian Union of Public Employees said in a Facebook post.

Air Canada said some flights will be canceled over the next seven to ten days until the schedule is stabilized and that customers with canceled flights can choose between a refund, travel credit, or rebooking on another airline.

The flight attendants walked off the job on Saturday after contract talks with the carrier failed. They had sought pay for tasks such as boarding passengers.
While the details of the negotiations were not immediately released, the union said unpaid work was over.

Over the past two years, unions in aerospace, construction, airline and rail sectors have pushed employers for higher pay, improved conditions and better benefits amid a tight labor market.

Air Canada’s flight attendants have for months argued new contracts should include pay for work done on the ground, such as boarding passengers.

Its CEO had on Monday in a Reuters interview stopped short of offering plans to break the deadlock, while defending the airline’s offer of a 38% boost to flight attendants’ total compensation.

While many customers had expressed support for the flight attendants, frustration with flight cancellations was growing.

Retiree Klaus Hickman missed a flight to Toronto earlier in the week. While he rebooked on another airline, he was concerned about returning to Calgary on time for a connecting flight to Germany.

Hickman sympathizes with workers demanding better pay but is worried about his own health and travel challenges.

“They want to get more money to survive. And so it is with everybody else,” he said.
Canada’s largest carrier normally carries 130,000 people daily and is part of the global Star Alliance of airlines.

James Numfor, 38, from Regina, Saskatchewan, had been stranded in Toronto for two nights since returning from Cameroon for his brother’s funeral. Air Canada only provided one night in a hotel for his family before leaving them without further support, he said.
He had slept in the airport with his family.

ents Air Canada’s 10,400 flight attendants, wanted to make gains on unpaid work that go beyond recent advances secured by their counterparts at U.S. carriers like American Airlines

In a rare act of defiance, the union remained on strike even after the Canada Industrial Relations Board declared its action unlawful.

Their refusal to follow a federal labor board order for the flight attendants to return to work had created a three-way standoff between the company, workers and the government.

Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu had urged both sides to consider government mediation and raised pressure on Air Canada on Monday, promising to investigate allegations of unpaid work in the airline sector.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he hoped Russia’s Vladimir Putin would move forward on ending the war in Ukraine but conceded that the Kremlin leader may not want to make a deal at all, adding this would create a “rough situation” for Putin.

In an interview with the Fox News “Fox & Friends” programme, Trump said he believed Putin’s course of action would become clear in the next couple of weeks. Trump again ruled out American boots on the ground in Ukraine and gave no specifics about the security guarantees he has previously said Washington could offer Kyiv under any post-war settlement.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem (reaching a peace deal), to be honest with you. I think Putin is tired of it. I think they’re all tired of it, but you never know,” Trump said.

“We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks … It’s possible that he doesn’t want to make a deal,” said Trump, who has previously threatened more sanctions on Russia and nations that buy its oil if Putin does not make peace.

Ukraine and its European allies have been buoyed by Trump’s promise of security guarantees to help end the war during an extraordinary summit on Monday but face many unanswered questions, including how willing Russia will be to play ball.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed Monday’s talks at the White House with the U.S. president as a “major step forward” towards ending Europe’s deadliest conflict in 80 years and setting up a trilateral meeting with Putin and Trump in the coming weeks.

Zelenskiy was flanked by the leaders of allies including Germany, France and Britain at the summit and his warm rapport with Trump contrasted sharply with their disastrous Oval Office meeting in February.

But beyond the optics, the path to peace remains deeply uncertain and Zelenskiy may be forced to make painful compromises to end the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Analysts say more than 1 million people have been killed or wounded in the conflict.

RUSSIAN ATTACKS

While the Washington talks allowed for a temporary sense of relief in Kyiv, there was no let-up in the fighting. Russia launched 270 drones and 10 missiles in an overnight attack on Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, the largest this month. The energy ministry said Russia had targeted energy facilities in the central Poltava region, home to Ukraine’s only oil refinery, causing big fires.

However, Russia also returned the bodies of 1,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said. Moscow received 19 bodies of its own soldiers in return, according to the state-run TASS news agency.

“The good news (from Monday’s summit) is that there was no blow-up. Trump didn’t demand Ukrainian capitulation nor cut off support. The mood music was positive and the trans-Atlantic alliance lives on,” John Foreman, a former British defence attache to Kyiv and Moscow, told Reuters.

“On the downside, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the nature of security guarantees and what exactly the U.S. has in mind.”

Ukraine’s allies held talks in the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” format on Tuesday, discussing additional sanctions to crank up the pressure on Russia. The grouping has also agreed that planning teams will meet U.S. counterparts in the coming days to advance plans for security guarantees for Ukraine.

NATO military leaders are expected to meet on Wednesday to discuss Ukraine, with U.S. General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expected to attend the meeting virtually, officials told Reuters.

‘TIPTOEING AROUND TRUMP’

Russia has made no explicit commitment to a meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow did not reject any formats for discussing peace in Ukraine but any meeting of national leaders “must be prepared with utmost thoroughness”.

Putin has said Russia will not tolerate troops from the NATO alliance in Ukraine. He has also shown no sign of backing down from demands for territory, including land not under Russia’s military control, following his summit with Trump last Friday in Alaska.

Neil Melvin, director, International Security at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said Russia could drag out the war while trying to deflect U.S. pressure with a protracted peace negotiation.

“I think behind this there’s a struggle going on between Ukraine and the Europeans on one side, and the Russians on the other, not to present themselves to Trump as the obstacle to his peace process,” Melvin said.

“They’re all tiptoeing around Trump” to avoid any blame, he said, adding that on security guarantees, “the problem is that what Trump has said is so vague it’s very hard to take it seriously”.