WestJet is warning passengers it will take several days for its flight schedule to normalize after reaching a tentative deal early Monday morning with the union representing its 4,400 flight attendants.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees said in a news release that the tentative agreement will be presented to the flight attendants for a ratification vote. In the meantime, they will return to work following a roughly one-day-long strike.

But the airline cautioned that travellers would still need to be patient over the coming days.

“As we resume flying and repositioning our aircraft and crews, some flights may continue to be disrupted,” WestJet said in a travel advisory, adding that passengers should continue to check flight statuses and monitor e-mail and text notifications.

The tentative deal ends the labour action by flight attendants, which had led to more than 920 cancelled flights since early Saturday morning, according to aviation analytics company Cirium, and left thousands stranded during the busy summer travel season.

The union argued that the flight attendants were not fairly compensated for the work they performed before a plane departs and after it lands. Details of the deal were not immediately available. But Alia Hussain, president of CUPE local 8125, did suggest it addresses concerns about unpaid work.

“It improves on the long-standing flight credit system by recognizing more of the work that cabin crew are required to perform and increasing the compensation for that work,” she told reporters outside the airport in Calgary.

“We wouldn’t bring a deal to our membership if we didn’t believe the puzzle pieces, in the way that they would come together, would be something they would ratify based on the circumstances we were facing.”

The members of the union local have 30 days to ratify the agreement, Ms. Hussain said.

WestJet chief executive officer Alexis von Hoensbroech apologized on Monday for the frustration the disruption caused customers.

“Our teams are working hard to restore service and get our guests on their way to their destinations as quickly as possible and we appreciate everyone’s patience as we get back to normal,” he said in a news release.

Many travellers’ journeys did not go smoothly in the hours after the tentative deal was announced. At Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, crowds of passengers swarmed WestJet employees and pleaded for help resolving travel plans in shambles because of cancelled flights.

As the staffers answered questions, people shook their heads, waved their hands in frustration and walked away. While many WestJet flights were shown as cancelled on the airport’s departure screens, two flights took off after 1:30 p.m. on Monday.

One prospective traveller, Jessica Slater-Hamilton, who drove nearly three hours with her two children and husband to the airport from the hamlet of Tara, Ont., was looking forward to watching her son play his first national softball tournament in Surrey, B.C.

She was hopeful that her 5 a.m. flight on Monday would be rescheduled after she learned of a tentative deal. When she arrived at the airport, Ms. Slater-Hamilton said WestJet employees referred her to the airline’s help phone number, or its website.

She waited five hours on hold with no answer or help. Ms. Slater-Hamilton said the situation is stressful because her family saved for more than a year for the flight and can’t afford to book with a different airline.

“I understand the idea of bargaining, but it’s not the big corporations that are hurting. It’s little people like us that have been saving for this for a really long time,” she said, wiping away tears.

Ms. Slater-Hamilton was looking to send her son and daughter alone on a flight if it meant he could play in the tournament.

Cassandra Ruggiero, a Toronto business health care professional, had an all-inclusive Cancun family vacation involuntarily extended because of a cancelled Sunwing flight (operated by WestJet). She was aware that other travellers had found themselves in more challenging situations, but she said that didn’t ease the exasperation triggered by spending hours on the phone or on a virtual chat to end up with no answers from WestJet.

Her family’s flight was initially cancelled on Saturday. That evening, they were rebooked on a flight for Wednesday. But by Sunday, the flight attendants were on strike, sparking a panic to find a way home on another airline.

Despite WestJet and the union representing about 44-hundred flight attendants reaching a tentative deal, many passengers are left frustrated passengers as they scrambled to change their travel plans at the end of the long weekend.

The Canadian Press

As of Monday morning, when the tentative deal was announced, Ms. Ruggiero was not certain whether her family would be back in Toronto by Wednesday.

“It just feels like we’re being slapped in the face as a customer to say, ‘Figure it out yourself, and guess what? The onus is on you. The financial burden is on you,’” she said.

“These are big corporations. I’m sure they’re losing money, but that’s on them. It doesn’t mean you get to leave your customers stranded.”

With reports from Vanmala Subramaniam and The Canadian Press