Air Canada

AIR CANADA MAINLINE ONLY. Air Canada's compensation backgrounder of 18 August 2025 publishes actual 2024 earnings, not a scale, and both annual figures are explicitly mainline: 'Half of Air Canada mainline flight attendants earned more than $54,000 in 2024, excluding incentive rewards, and health and pension benefits' and 'At the top of the scale, which they reach within 10 years, flight attendants can make more than $70,000.' READ THE FLOOR CORRECTLY: CAD 54,000 is a median, so half of mainline crew earn below this row's minimum, and Air Canada itself notes the median is pulled down because about a third of flight attendants were hired in the past five years. READ THE CEILING CORRECTLY: the source says 'more than $70,000', so the top is a published floor for top-of-scale crew, not a maximum; the row understates rather than overstates. ROUGE IS EXCLUDED. The source publishes no Rouge annual figure at all. Its only Rouge datum is CAD 41.39/hr at five years of service, against CAD 63.07/hr for a mainline flight attendant at ten years, and it notes about 75% of Rouge crew were hired in the past five years, so Rouge earnings sit materially below this band. Annualisation was not attempted, which remains the right call, but not for the reason previously given: the same page does publish guarantees, 'a minimum pay ranging between 65 and 80 credit hours' per month for Air Canada cabin crew and 75 to 80 for Rouge. That 65-to-80 spread is too wide to annualise an hourly rate against, which is the honest reason to decline. STALENESS, EXPLICIT: these are 2024 actuals and are superseded. Arbitrator Paula Knopf's award of 17 February 2026 raised mainline steps 1 to 9 by 12.0% and all other mainline steps by 8.0%, and all Rouge steps by 13.0%, retroactive to 1 April 2025, then 3.0% on 1 April 2026, with 2.5% on 1 April 2027 and 2.75% on 1 April 2028 to come, under a four-year agreement running to March 2029. Current mainline earnings are therefore roughly 11 to 15 per cent above the range shown. The percentages are not compounded onto the actuals here because rate increases do not map cleanly onto realised earnings, which also reflect hours flown and step mix. Ground pay of 60% of the hourly rate for designated ground time began April 2026, rising to 65% in 2027 and 70% in 2028, and is additional. Contract currency CAD. FX: 1 CAD = 0.7172 USD, Bank of Canada daily rate for 7 August 2026, verified against the Bank of Canada valet series. GROSS, pre-tax, taxable in Canada, with NO housing, schooling or transport allowances, unlike Gulf packages where a comparable headline figure is tax-free and sits on top of employer-paid housing and schooling.

MIN EQUALS MAX DELIBERATELY. The only published annual figure is a single average: Air Canada states a Service Director earned an average of CAD 80,000 in 2024, excluding incentive rewards and health and pension benefits. No range, distribution or step scale is published, so there is no sourced floor or ceiling and I have not invented one. Published hourly reference points for 2025: CAD 73.03/hr on narrowbody, CAD 87.01/hr on widebody. The role oversees onboard service and all flight attendants are eligible for it, so it is a bid position on the same seniority structure rather than a management grade. STALENESS, EXPLICIT: superseded by the 17 February 2026 Knopf arbitration award, which raised rates 8.0% for senior steps retroactive to 1 April 2025 and a further 3.0% on 1 April 2026; current earnings are higher and I have not compounded them onto the average. Contract currency CAD. FX: 1 CAD = 0.7172 USD, Bank of Canada daily rate 7 August 2026. GROSS, pre-tax, taxable in Canada, NO housing, schooling or transport allowances, unlike tax-free Gulf packages. Confidence weak because a single employer-stated average during a public labour dispute is a partisan figure, not a published scale.