Air Canada: 1)Air canada temporarily suspends flights to New York’s JFK due to high jet fuel prices; 2)Air Canada ordered to pay pilots who were denied religious COVID-19 vaccine exemption

1)Air Canada temporarily suspends flights to New York’s JFK due to high jet fuel prices

Courtesy Barrie360.com

By Christopher Reynolds, April 17, 2026

Air Canada says it is suspending flights to New York City’s JFK airport from Toronto and Montreal between June and October due to high fuel prices.

Spokesman Christophe Hennebelle says that a doubling of fuel prices since the start of the Iran war has forced it to begin cutting back on routes and flights.

He says Air Canada will continue to fly to New York-area airports 34 times daily from six cities across Canada.

The airline says affected customers will be contacted with alternative travel options.

Air Canada joins the ranks of Lufthansa, KLM and other carriers across the globe who’ve had to trim their flight schedules as skyrocketing jet fuel costs render some routes unprofitable.

The move comes as commodity shortages threaten to push airfares upward well into the peak summer travel season, even as signs of hope emerge for a resumption of oil flows from the Persian Gulf.

2)Air Canada ordered to pay pilots who were denied religious COVID-19 vaccine exemption

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Christopher Reynolds, April 14, 2026.

An arbitrator has ordered Air Canada to grant back pay to seven pilots denied religious exemptions from the airline’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy in a violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

In a case of workplace religious discrimination, Air Canada placed the pilots on unpaid leave because they failed to meet the company’s bar for “sincere religious belief,” while other pilots who cleared it received more than six months of paid leave, the decision states.

Air Canada had required the religious objectors to submit a letter from a religious leader explaining why they could not be vaccinated. However, arbitrator James Hayes ruled that the seven Christian pilots should have been granted exemptions from the outset despite presenting no letters, given their requests were “grounded in sincere religious conviction.”

“An ‘expert’ or an authority on religious law is not the surrogate for an individual’s affirmation of what his or her religious beliefs are. Religious belief is intensely personal and can easily vary from one individual to another,” Hayes wrote, quoting a 2022 arbitration decision on vaccine mandates.

“All of the grievors testified honestly and the substantive nexus between their religious beliefs and objections to the employer mandatory vaccination policy was manifest.”

The ruling orders back pay for a period spanning late October 2021 to early May 2022 — matching the earnings of pilots whose exemption requests were greenlit from the get-go — after which all exempted pilots were placed on unpaid leave with benefits.

Exemptions marked one more hurdle for airlines as COVID-19 battered the travel industry amid pandemic-related travel bans that grounded flights across the globe.

Air Canada had argued that it granted spiritual accommodations when the request demonstrated a sincere religious belief and a clear link between that belief and an inability to be vaccinated.

The Montreal-based company stated that requests based strictly on personal preference or “the fear that COVID-19 vaccines may alter DNA” — or other scientifically unsound concerns — would be grounds for denial.

The seven pilots, whose faith ranged from Catholic and Baptist to non-denominational, had pointed to various aspects of belief and Scripture to explain their vaccine aversion.

One submitted that introducing a novel substance with unknown long-term consequences “risked defiling what Scripture calls the temple of the Holy Spirit.”

Another found the answer in conscience and prayer: “God was telling me this is not honest or true, and that taking the vaccine would be wrong for me.”

Handed down on March 3, the ruling directs Air Canada to compensate the pilots — all members of the Air Line Pilots Association, which brought the case — for their lost income within 60 days.

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