Grounded

If you've flown Air Canada recently and wonder why your flight was cancelled without notice, it might have been because the pilots maxed out their contracted flying time.

Air Canada is cancelling some flights because its pilots have reached the limit of their monthly flying time, spokeswoman Laura Cooke told CBC Newsworld on Sunday.

"We do apologize," she said.

But "today should be the end of it" because the airline starts a new block of time – the August quota – at midnight, she said.

It's not clear exactly how many flights or passengers are affected.

Cooke blamed the problem on a 70 per cent increase in cancelled flights in July because of the weather.

When a flight is cancelled or delayed, the pilot may still be on duty, sitting in the plane and eating up his flying time.

It's even worse if a pilot is held over in one city, because then the airline may have to find a replacement for him at his intended destination for his next flight.

Air Canada had 177 flights cancelled in Halifax in July, and electrical storms in Manitoba and the northest U.S. raised the total, Cooke said.

The airline has reserve pilots, but they also "have reached their max," she said.

Yet another reason not to fly Air Canada, if you can avoid it. WestJet and Canjet don't seem to have these problems on their domestic flights; then again, their pilots aren't unionized.

Air Canada is still functioning with a pre-deregulation, pre-privatization business model that has already sent it to bankruptcy protection once, and with it, the same bad service and needless delays that make air travel increasingly annoying.

You couldn't get me into an Air Canada flight at gunpoint these days.

Source: CBC