One activity planned for this week would’ve been a feather in the cap for 15-year-old Montrealer Mikaela Hosein-Patel after 10 years as a Girl Guide: her first-ever trip to Scotland.
“I was looking forward to the train ride from London to Edinburgh the most, and the (Royal Edinburgh) Military Tattoo,” she told Global News. “I’ve been planning this trip for two years.”
Hosein-Patel and 15 other guides and guide leaders from across the country were to embark on a once-in-a-lifetime trip organized by Girl Guides of Canada to visit parts of the U.K.
They were scheduled to leave Toronto on the evening of Saturday, Aug. 16, for nine days.
When her flight from Montreal to Toronto was cancelled, her dad, Pramit Patel, drove her to Toronto to catch the connecting flight to London’s Heathrow Airport, but when they got there, they got more bad news.
That flight was cancelled, too, because of the strike and lockout at Air Canada, which started the day they were supposed to leave.
“I mean, I was sad and frustrated, just like every other girl that was going to go on this trip,” Hosein-Patel recalled. “Yeah, I cried.”
She had spent the last two years raising funds to help pay for the $5,500 trip. Though the family believes that the airline will refund the fare — about 60 per cent of the cost — the family fears other fees for hotels, event tickets and other transportation might be lost.
Patel holds Air Canada responsible.
“(They’re) generating all these profits every year, and ultimately the staff had to fight for their rights, unfortunately, holding a strike at this point,” he said. “At the end of the day, customers are the ones that are suffering for this.”
The airline estimates that 500,000 passengers were affected by the three-day job action that ended overnight Monday. Now, many of those clients are starting to file lawsuits against the airline as well as the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents the cabin crew who were on strike.
Hosein-Patel’s family has joined a proposed class-action lawsuit against Air Canada, filed by two law firms: LPC Avocats and Renno Vathilakis. It is open to anyone worldwide to whom the airline did not provide a reservation for the next available flight or alternative travel arrangements as required by law.
“Air Canada had a statutory obligation to book people on the next available flight when they couldn’t respect the 48-hour rule,” Joey Zukran of LPC Avocats explained.
He estimates damages could be in the $50-million range.
Lambert Avocats is also seeking approval for a class-action lawsuit — this one against CUPE — claiming in a statement that the union’s “decision to continue its strike illegally has had the effect of prolonging and worsening the massive cancellations of Air Canada flights.”
On Saturday, the Canada Industrial Relations Board asked the union to direct the flight attendants to return to work, less than 12 hours after the strike began.
CUPE decided to defy the back-to-work order and the job action continued until Monday, when a tentative agreement was made with the airline.
“The class action is proposed for all persons who had a reservation for Air Canada or Air Canada Rouge for flights that were scheduled after Sunday at 2 p.m., that were subsequently cancelled because of CUPE’s decision to maintain its strike,” lawyer Philippe Brault said.
Neither of the proposed class-action suits has yet been approved.
Global has reached out to both Air Canada and CUPE and has not yet heard back.