Over the August long weekend, roughly 250,000 WestJet passengers had their flights cancelled when the airline’s flight attendants walked out over pay, including compensation for ground duties performed before takeoff and after landing.Less than a year earlier, an Air Canada strike grounded the country’s largest carrier for about 60 hours. The two disputes were different in their details, but both exposed how quickly a strike at a major airline can disrupt the wider air-travel system.I’ve spent years studying how airlines and their unions collide, and in Canada the pattern is becoming familiar. Once an airline strike begins, there is little institutional middle ground between widespread disruption and government intervention. Other countries show this is not the only way to manage a strike. Read more: Flight attendants have gone 50 years without ground pay — here’s the reason behind it Canada’s all-or-nothing approachOnce an airline strike begins, Canada offers little institutional middle ground. Either the walkout proceeds and strands hundreds of thousands of travellers at the height of the season, or the federal government intervenes to bring the dispute to an end.Employers and unions can negotiate, mediate or settle without government intervention, as WestJet and its flight attendants ultimately did. The problem arises when bargaining fails and a strike continues. Canada has few mechanisms for allowing a lawful strike to proceed while maintaining a predictable floor of air service.That leaves the government facing a difficult choice. It can allow the disruption to continue, with costs for passengers, businesses and communities that depend on air travel, or it can intervene in a dispute — even though employees have a right to strike recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada as part of the freedom of association protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.Ottawa has increasingly turned to Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code in major federal labour disputes. The provision lets the labour minister direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board to take steps to help resolve a labour dispute.The government used the provision in the 2024 rail and port disputes and again during the 2025 Air Canada strike. Unions have challenged the government’s use of these powers, including on constitutional grounds.The underlying issue is structural. Canada has no general framework for targeted or partial airline strikes that would allow workers to maintain bargaining pressure while maintaining a predictable level of service. When a dispute reaches an impasse, the disruption can therefore become difficult to contain without government intervention.Other countries offer alternativesOther countries have developed more targeted and proportionate approaches to labour action worth considering. Italy’s aviation rules establish minimum services during strikes involving pilots, flight attendants, maintenance personnel and airline ground staff. Strikes are announced in advance, limited in duration and scheduled around protected periods. An independent commission oversees compliance.France takes a different approach. Air traffic controllers are required to give at least 48 hours’ notice before joining a strike, giving authorities time to organize air traffic and inform passengers about expected disruptions.Germany, on the other hand, relies heavily on short, pre-announced “warning strikes” during bargaining rather than open-ended national walkouts.These systems illustrate two tools that could help create more predictability during an aviation strike: advance notice and a defined minimum level of service. The aim is not to eliminate disruption entirely, as a strike needs to impose real costs on an employer to give workers meaningful bargaining leverage. The aim is to make that disruption more predictable and proportionate, allowing airlines to keep some services operating while workers continue to exercise their right to strike.Strikes can preserve public supportA more graduated system could also help unions sustain public support during a prolonged dispute in Canada. WestJet’s flight attendants had a clear and widely understandable grievance over unpaid ground work. The union estimated that members spent about 35 hours a month performing unpaid duties, such as boarding passengers and conducting safety checks, before their paid time began.That argument can generate public sympathy. Prolonged disruption, however, can put that support under pressure.Large-scale disruption can also increase political pressure for government intervention. Once Ottawa invokes Section 107, the union’s immediate bargaining leverage can give way to a process that brings the strike to an end. The very mechanism used to exercise the right to strike can therefore create pressure for the government to curtail it.The aim is to preserve that leverage while distributing the disruption over time. Workers would still be able to impose meaningful costs on an airline, but passengers and the wider economy would have greater certainty about when and where those costs would fall.A better model for CanadaCanada doesn’t need to redesign federal labour law from the ground up. The Canada Labour Code already provides a limited framework for maintaining services during a strike.Under Section 87.4 of the code, employers and unions are required to maintain services to prevent an immediate and serious danger to public health or safety. Extending that principle toward a genuine minimum-service threshold for critical transportation would be an adjustment rather than a wholesale transformation.The timing is significant. Ottawa is currently consulting on changes to the federal labour-relations framework. Among the issues under consideration is a review of Section 107 of the labour code, along with changes to bargaining timelines, strikes and lockout notices, and approaches used in other jurisdictions.Any new framework would have to preserve a meaningful right to strike. A durable minimum-service model should be developed with unions and employers, rather than imposed on them.Air travel is an important part of Canada’s transportation infrastructure. Other countries show that protecting that system doesn’t mean eliminating workers’ bargaining power. Canada can preserve the right to strike while giving workers, employers and passengers a more predictable framework for exercising it.That design can be changed; the question is whether Canada chooses to do so before the next long weekend forces the issue again.John Gradek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.