The chaos plaguing air travel in Canada and around the world was utterly predictable. As delays, canceled flights, pared-back routes, lost luggage, and poor communications upend the already miserable undertaking of flying, frustrated passengers are lashing out against workers, airlines, and governments. Two of the three deserve the opprobrium (hint: it’s not the workers).

Canada’s poor airline performance is not unique, but it’s a world leader in being terrible. In the spring of 2020, Air Canada temporarily laid off 16,500 staff in an effort to save hundreds of millions of dollars. Then the company took big bucks in federal support — over $500 million through the federal wage subsidy alone — and laid off an additional 1,400 workers in January of 2021. The layoffs were devastating for workers who, forced onto Employment Insurance, faced severe hardship during the pandemic. As the Canadian Union of Public Employees argued, “Allowing workers to retain their jobs on CEWS [the federal wage subsidy program] allows them to retain important benefits during a pandemic, and it also would allow them to continue to work periodically without penalty — neither of which are possible when workers are laid off and forced onto Employment Insurance.”

As travelers returned to pre-pandemic modes of transport — in spite of persistent coronavirus cases — frustrations with early-pandemic screening measures rose. Those measures were blamed for travel woes. The government suspended some of them. Things did not improve.