and as we've been reporting on City News Air Canada is on the brink of having to cancel flights so far failing to come to a deal with Pilots this week the deadline to avoid a strike is set for this weekend with more on the impact to Travelers we're joined Now by Aviation professor John gradick with McGill University John thank you so much for joining us my pleasure to be here so this isn't the first strike among major airlines that we've been tracking this year what are the similarities between what happening with Air Canada and the recent strike we saw over at WestJet uh the most recent strike we had at WestJet was with mechanics um and that lasted somewhere in a range of about 24 or 30 hours I think before they they were legislated or or binding arbitration was installed for the for the mechanics uh I think that um you know we've had a threat of a strike in the spring with uh the pilots at WestJet which was resolved at the last minute I think within 24 hours of shut down so this is a pattern of negotiation within the air transportation industry uh that's been going on for a couple of years started with Air Transat with their flat attendance uh moved to WestJet now it's Air Canada so it's slowly progressing its way around the industry the big question too is whe whether or not the federal government is going to be getting involved and we did see that happen with uh the recent vral uh work stoppage is there potential for for that to happen here there's always that potential you know the the issue that we faced with the rail strike was really a total shutdown of the Canadian rail Transportation industry uh by having both carriers affected uh in this case that is we're nowhere near that uh this is not going to be a a National Emergency this is not going to be you know a a situation where we have to have uh mandated uh air travel we have other carriers in Canada we have WestJet we have Porter we have flare um they have over 200 airplanes so it's not as if you know we are going to be suffering irreparable harm uh in our Industries as a result of Air Canada uh being shut down so I I I think the government um is going to be looking to get get the negotiation process and the the negotiation through of a labor agreement between two parties as a way to get this thing resolved and we will stay away from government intervention it's interesting too when you speak about what happened with WestJet this summer you saw that uh you know the strike might have been over but Travelers continued to feel those impacts even days and days later had that domino effect here could you leave us with some details on just how widespread the impact uh will be if this strike does move forward yeah what what's going to happen is a Canada is going to have to start positioning aircraft uh at its uh locations at its base is starting on probably Sunday we'll start to see some cancellations start to show up uh Air Canada is required or should be looking at trying to protect its assets and make protect its its employees airplanes will have to get positioned in locations where um on a restart of the airline after we have a settlement uh that they can in fact start the airline up fairly quickly and and fairly efficiently so when you shut down you want to make sure that you're putting airplanes in the location where they can be serviced and that in those locations you're able to restart operations without having to move Crews and equipment around the world to go and catch up to your airplanes so airplanes will have to be at home bases as well as Crews and that'll start happening on Sunday and we are nearing that deadline there hopefully a deal will be uh met before we have to get to that point here professor John grck with Migel University thank you so much my pleasure have a great day take care