WestJet and CUPE Local 8125 reached a tentative deal in the early hours of August 3, ending a strike by roughly 4,400 flight attendants that had already gutted the airline’s schedule. By the time picket lines came down, WestJet had canceled 922 of 2,365 scheduled flights — about 39% of everything it was supposed to fly — between August 1 and 5. The strike itself ran August 2 to 3.

Here’s the part travelers need to catch up on fast: WestJet’s one-time free rebooking and cancellation waiver expired on August 6. That grace period is gone. If you’ve still got a disrupted WestJet, WestJet Vacations, Sunwing, or Vacances WestJet Québec booking sitting in your inbox, you’re no longer covered by a courtesy policy — you’re covered by whatever Canada’s actual passenger protection law says. Those are two very different things, and a lot of travelers are about to find that out the hard way.

WestJet Strike Snapshot (as of August 7, 2026)

Factor	Status
Strike dates	Aug 2–3, 2026
Flights canceled	922 of 2,365 scheduled (~39%), Aug 1–5
Union / workforce	CUPE Local 8125, ~4,400 flight attendants
Tentative deal reached	Early morning, Aug 3, 2026 (pending ratification)
Deal terms	13% wage increase retroactive to Jan 1, 2026; 2.5% annual raises through 2029; new ground-duty pay premium (~12% more)
Free rebooking/cancellation waiver	Expired Aug 6, 2026
Full schedule restoration	No firm date announced
APPR cash compensation for the strike	Not applicable — domestic strikes are “outside the carrier’s control”
Rebooking/refund rights	Still guaranteed — 48-hour rebooking or 30-day refund

Bottom line: The free-pass window is over. Voluntary changes cost money again. But if WestJet cancels or significantly delays your flight, you still don’t pay for a new one, and you still have refund rights that don’t expire just because the strike did.

What Are Your Rights If WestJet Cancels or Delays Your Flight?

1. Airline-caused disruption still triggers full APPR protection, waiver or no waiver. If WestJet cancels your flight or delays it more than three hours because of the lingering strike recovery, you’re entitled to rebooking or a refund — that right didn’t expire on August 6.
2. You get a choice, not a consolation prize. WestJet must rebook you on the next available flight (its own, a partner’s, or if needed a competitor’s) departing within 48 hours, or refund your ticket in the original form of payment within 30 days.
3. No cash compensation applies for strike-related disruption. Under the Air Passenger Protection Regulations, a labor strike is classified as outside the airline’s control. That kills the $400–$1,000 compensation tier that applies to controllable disruptions — WestJet doesn’t owe you a check just for the inconvenience.
4. International segments get more protection, not less. If your itinerary crosses a border, the Montreal Convention layers on top of APPR and covers your actual out-of-pocket costs.
5. If you change your own plans voluntarily now, you lose these protections. Making your own date change or cancellation after August 6 puts you back under WestJet’s standard fare rules — fees apply like it’s any other week.

What Actually Happened, in Order

WestJet and CUPE’s Mainline component had been at the table since January over one core issue: pay for ground duty. Flight attendants argued they were doing real, safety-critical work — boarding, pre-departure safety checks, managing delays at the gate — without getting paid for most of it, because WestJet’s compensation structure centered on time the aircraft was actually moving.

That dispute became a strike deadline, then a strike. CUPE Local 8125’s roughly 4,400 flight attendants walked out August 2. WestJet, unable to safely staff cabins, started pulling flights before the strike even started and kept cutting through the weekend. By August 5, the tally landed at 922 canceled flights out of 2,365 scheduled — a number that puts this closer to a full network stoppage than a partial slowdown.

The tentative agreement that ended it, reached at roughly 4:15 a.m. Mountain time on August 3, gives flight attendants a 13% wage increase backdated to January 1, 2026, followed by 2.5% raises annually through 2029. The bigger structural change is the new ground-duty pay premium — WestJet says it’s worth roughly another 12% on top, and it directly answers the unpaid-work complaint that triggered the walkout in the first place. The deal still needs to clear a ratification vote before it’s final, but flights resumed immediately once the tentative agreement landed.

None of that made the backlog disappear overnight. Aircraft and crews were scattered across the network in the wrong places, and WestJet has been explicit that a full return to its normal schedule will take time — no firm restoration date has been given as of this writing.

The Waiver Is Gone. Here’s What That Actually Changes.

WestJet’s flexible change and cancellation policy covered WestJet, WestJet Vacations, Sunwing, and Vacances WestJet Québec bookings through August 6 — one date change or cancellation, no fee, guest’s choice. That was a courtesy on top of the law, not a legal requirement, and it ran out today.

What that means in practice: if you want to move your own trip because you’re nervous about lingering delays, you’re back to paying WestJet’s standard change and cancellation fees. The waiver bought a week of flexibility. That week is over.

What it doesn’t change: if WestJet is the one canceling or substantially delaying your flight — not you deciding you’d rather fly next week — APPR still applies in full. Airline-caused disruption doesn’t need a waiver to trigger your rebooking and refund rights. Those rights are baked into federal regulation, not a temporary PR gesture, and they don’t have an expiration date tied to a press release.

The confusion is going to be common this week: passengers who assume “the waiver’s gone” means “I have no options” when what actually changed is who’s paying for changes they initiate versus changes the airline forces on them.

APPR vs. EU261: Why Canada Pays Out So Much Less

Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations and the EU’s EC 261 both promise rebooking and refunds. They diverge hard on cash. Under APPR, a disruption caused by a labor strike — the airline’s own staff, in this case — is treated as outside the carrier’s control, which strips out compensation entirely. Under EU261, the European Court of Justice has ruled the opposite way for an airline’s own staff strikes: those don’t count as extraordinary circumstances, so EU-covered passengers on an internal staff strike would typically still collect €250–€600 in cash.

That’s the gap. Same basic scenario — flight attendants walk out — and a Canadian domestic passenger gets rebooking and a refund while a similarly situated EU passenger gets rebooking, a refund, and a check. We ran the opposite comparison in our Barcelona and Palma ground-handler strike coverage, where a third-party contractor dispute knocked EU261 cash off the table entirely. WestJet’s situation is almost a mirror image: it’s the airline’s own workforce on strike, which is exactly the scenario where EU261 pays and APPR doesn’t.

If you’re used to how Spain’s ATC strike coverage played out — cleanly extraordinary, no compensation debate on either side of the Atlantic — this is a different animal. It’s not a jurisdictional gray area. It’s two regulatory regimes making opposite policy choices about the same category of event, and Canadian travelers are on the losing end of that choice.

International Segments: The Montreal Convention Changes the Math

If your WestJet itinerary crosses an international border — including routes to the US — the Montreal Convention applies on top of APPR. It doesn’t pay a fixed cash amount the way EU261 does. Instead, it makes the airline liable for your actual reasonable expenses tied to the delay: meals, a hotel room, ground transport, phone and data costs to manage the disruption, even lost prepaid costs like a missed tour or hotel night at your destination. The cap sits at roughly CAD $12,000 per passenger, and the airline can only avoid paying by proving it took “all reasonable measures” to prevent the delay — a hard sell when the labor dispute had been public for weeks before the walkout.

Practically: keep every receipt. Meals, hotel, transportation, calls home — if your delay was strike-related and your ticket had an international leg, document it and file the expense claim with WestJet directly. This is a different process than the automatic rebooking-or-refund rule, and it’s easy to leave money on the table simply by not knowing it exists.

Flying WestJet Out of Europe? EC261 Still Applies.

A smaller slice of travelers — WestJet does operate some transatlantic routes — departing from an EU or EEA airport keep EC261 rights regardless of what APPR says about the same disruption. That means the €250–€600 compensation tier is live for those specific itineraries, on top of the rebooking and refund rights every affected passenger already has. Worth checking your departure airport specifically before you assume Canadian rules are all that apply to your ticket.

What To Do Right Now

1. Check your flight status directly with WestJet, not just your calendar. Recovery flights are still shuffling as of this week, and a flight that looked fine yesterday can still get consolidated or delayed today.
2. If WestJet cancels or delays you more than three hours, ask for rebooking or a refund explicitly. Don’t accept a travel credit by default — you’re entitled to your money back in its original form if you’d rather not fly.
3. Save every receipt if your trip includes an international leg. Montreal Convention reimbursement requires documentation; a scribbled hotel confirmation on your phone works, a vague memory of what you spent doesn’t.
4. If you’re now paying to change plans voluntarily, compare the fee against just rebooking through Google Flights before assuming WestJet’s change fee is your only path — sometimes a fresh one-way booking on another carrier costs less than the change fee plus fare difference.
5. Check whether your credit card’s trip-delay coverage applies. Some cards pay out for strike-related delays regardless of what the airline owes you, and that benefit doesn’t care whether APPR classifies the strike as within or outside WestJet’s control.
6. If your itinerary connects through a US airport, the refund clock runs faster there. US DOT rules require a cash refund within 7 business days of a cancellation, versus APPR’s 30-day window — worth knowing how the two frameworks compare if part of your trip touches American airspace.

The Bottom Line

The strike is over. The backlog isn’t. WestJet ended a two-day walkout by roughly 4,400 flight attendants with a tentative deal that gives them a real pay increase and, more importantly for the union, actual pay for the ground work they’d been doing for free. Good outcome for the workforce. Messy outcome for the roughly 39% of scheduled flights that got wiped out getting there.

For passengers, the free-pass waiver that covered self-initiated changes is done as of August 6. What isn’t done: your legal right to a free rebooking or a full refund if WestJet — not you — is the reason your flight didn’t go as planned. No cash compensation for the strike itself under Canadian rules, unlike what a similar staff strike would trigger in Europe. But rebooking within 48 hours, a refund within 30 days if you’d rather have your money back, and — for anyone with an international leg — real reimbursement for what the disruption actually cost you. Know which rule applies to your ticket before you accept whatever the first agent offers.

For the broader framework on how airline delay rights and travel insurance overlap when a carrier’s own staff causes the disruption, our guide to delay compensation and coverage walks through where the gaps sit and how to fill them.

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Information current as of August 7, 2026. The WestJet-CUPE agreement is tentative pending ratification, and full schedule recovery timelines may shift. Verify current flight status directly with WestJet before traveling.