Regina airport bracing for potential WestJet disruptions

The impact of a potential WestJet work stoppage on the Regina airport remains to be seen.

Justin Reves, the Regina Airport Authority’s director of revenue development, public relations and customer experience, told the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Tuesday he doesn’t know what’ll happen if WestJet doesn’t reach a deal with its pilots by Friday.

“WestJet in their notice did say that they’re expecting significant impacts to their flight network,” Reves said. “It doesn’t seem like they’re saying all flights will be grounded, but certainly a good chunk of the flights could be disrupted as they try and move flights around the country and still keep some people flying.”

According to Reves, not all WestJet pilots are at the bargaining table, just mainline and Swoop pilots.

“WestJet Encore pilots are actually not a part of this negotiation,” he said. “A lot of our service is WestJet Encore, but again we don’t know how they’re going to redirect their fleet in different places.”

As for whether Air Canada can swoop in and help get people off the ground, Reves said he thinks the airline will add more flights if the potential WestJet disruptions are prolonged.

He also said the airport will have more capacity with Air Canada this summer to places like Toronto and Vancouver than it had back in 2019.

“Especially into June when (flights to) Montreal (start) and more flights are coming, we’ll have even more capacity,” he added.

Reves confirmed the airport will be posting online updates to keep people up to date as the situation unfolds. More staff will be hired, especially over the May long weekend, to deal with potential flight cancellations and delays.

A strike or lockout is likely

Karl Moore, an aviation expert and associate professor at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management in Montreal, told Gormley on Tuesday he thinks a strike is likely, without any flights taking off.

“But they may do a rolling strike or just … some flights and so on,” he said.

However, the aviation expert added WestJet seems to say it wants to lock out pilots.

“If management locks out the pilots, it doesn’t matter what (the pilots) want to do. They can’t go to work because they’re not allowed to come in the building,” he said.

Fortunately for travellers, pilot strikes usually don’t last long, according to Moore.

“(That’s) because it’s catastrophic. (Airlines) can’t fly without pilots. It’s something where it makes it difficult for the company and also the pilots,” he said.

With roughly a third of Canada’s air capacity being provided by WestJet, Moore said many Canadians would be impacted by a strike, particularly in Western Canada.

“Where WestJet is bigger and somewhat is retrenched under the … newish CEO in the last year or so,” he added.