hundreds of thousands of Canadians could have their travel plans grounded with a potential pilot strike just around the corner Canada's largest airline could start winding down their operations as soon as this weekend we're going to go yeah we're going to relax and enjoy ourselves and not worry about the strike and then we'll worry about the strike the day we leave Air Canada customers appear to be taking the news in stride as the airline releases some details of its contingency plan what we know so far is that flights will gradually be suspended over 3 days potentially beginning on Sunday this would gear up for a full shutdown on Wednesday September 18th the plan though will only be triggered if talks officially break down over the weekend and a 72-hour strike or lockout notice is issued what impact is this going to have it's going to be very disruptive extremely disruptive including its Budget Airline Rouge Air Canada operates nearly 670 flights every single day moving over a 100,000 passengers Duncan D is an airline expert and Air Canada's former coo there are not 110,000 empty seats in the entire air transportation system to carry those people regardless of the day regardless of whether there's a strike or not in terms of the impact uh geographically WestJet um has repositioned its um efforts into western Canada which basically means that if you live anywhere from from Toronto East uh to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces the disruptions in your region will be that much more significant Air Canada is allowing customers with travel schedule between September 15th and the 23rd to change their bookings right now at no cost if your flight is cancelled due to a strike or lockout Travelers will be notified and fully refunded for the cost of the ticket but if you're stranded no other compensation will be provided for things like food or hotels negotiations have been ongoing for about a year now and wages continue to be the sticking point while the airline has offered a 30% increase over three years the union says it's still below Market compensation telling city news in a written statement that Air Canada should stop threatening to disrupt air travel and come to the bargaining table with serious proposals both sides need to get serious about negotiations they need to put more water in their wine to compromise and hopefully we'll get to a deal before it's too late the good news is there's still several days left for bargaining and these things often do come down to the wire it's also possible that the federal government could intervene as it just did with the rail strike so lots to keep an eye on City News will be following all of the latest developments at Pearson Airport in Toronto Shauna hunt City news