WestJet Avoids Pilots’ Strike Through Last-Minute Tentative Agreement

An Air Canada flight departing for Toronto taxis to a runway as a WestJet flight bound for Palm Springs takes off, at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

The Calgary-based airline WestJet has signed a tentative agreement to avoid a labour strike threatened by the union representing its pilots. The strike would have forced the airline to ground the majority of its planes heading into a travel-heavy May long weekend.

WestJet and the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), which represents around 1,800 pilots working for WestJet and its subsidiary company Swoop, signed the agreement just hours before the strike deadline in the early hours of the morning on May 19.