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Air Canada will resume flights Tuesday after reaching a tentative agreement with its 10,000 flight attendants, who have been on strike since August 16. 

“The strike has ended,” CUPE said in a notice to its members. “We have a tentative agreement we will bring forward to you.”

A strike by cabin crews grounded Air Canada early Saturday, cancelling 700 daily flights and stranding global passengers. Wage disputes and pay for non-moving work caused the impasse.

Agreement details were not immediately available, according to the Globe and Mail. The tentative deal was announced after negotiations resumed Monday night with mediator William Kaplan.

Early Saturday, Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu ordered cabin crews back to work via the Canadian Industrial Relations Board, with an arbitrator to decide the agreement. The union deemed this a violation of their right to strike and refused to comply.

Mark Hancock, CUPE national president, yesterday said the order was unconstitutional. “We are already in the courts on section 107,” he said. 

CUPE defied the CIRB's Monday order to end the illegal strike, with Hancock stating he'd accept jail time. “If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it.”

Air Canada flights will now resume, said the Union Tuesday morning. “We are required to advise our membership that we must fully cooperate with [the] resumption of operations.”

The airline will restart 15-20% of its 700 daily flights starting Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET, with a full return to normal operations expected in 7-10 days. The extended shutdown makes the restart challenging, with a focus on bringing thousands of stranded passengers home.

Air Canada COO Mark Nasr stated that the new deal makes their flight attendants the highest paid in Canada, with "industry leading" pre- and post-flight pay, fulfilling their commitment to top compensation.

CUPE clarified that new ground duty provisions will be "by a long shot" the best in North America, a result of the strike forcing the company to significantly improve their offer.

Air Canada previously offered the union a 38% compensation increase over four years, including 12-16% hourly raises in the first year and a new preflight duties formula. Senior employees would average $87,000 annually.

“Unpaid work is over,” CUPE said in a statement on Tuesday, without providing details. Terms of the settlement will be detailed in a videoconference later today.

First-year Air Canada flight attendants earned roughly $33/hour under the expired contract, but were not paid until the plane door was closed, a common industry practice.