Customers wait their turn to be served at the Air Canada's office in Caracas
Customers wait their turn to be served at the Air Canada's office in Caracas March 18, 2014. Venezuela's government said on Tuesday it was breaking commercial ties with Air Canada a day after the airline suspended flights to Caracas citing the country's civil unrest. REUTERS/Marco Bello

Shares of Air Canada soared on Monday, following developments that the company and its pilots' group had forged a new 10-year labour contract. The deal, however, has yet to be ratified by the 3,000 pilot-members.

Portal Proactiveinvestors.com said Air Canada's shares grew to C$8.21, up by 4.3 percent, on Monday in Toronto. Both Air Canada and the pilots' group hope the 3,000 pilots will ratify the details of the new deal in about three weeks.

Details of the deal are yet to be released, but Capt. Craig Blandford, head of the Air Canada Pilots Association, quoted by portal cp24.com, said the union "won improved working conditions, job security, better pay, annual incentives and better profit sharing."

"Every year of the deal, we've got improvements," Blandford said. "We believe this is a significant investment in our future and provides Air Canada the stability to grow and hopefully this will provide confidence in the financial markets to see that this airline is on the right path."

The union was working with Air Canada under a four-year agreement by an arbitrator in 2012. That contract was set to expire in April 2016. But in June, the airline approached the union and opened talks to renew a five-year retroactive contract.

In a note to clients, analyst Cameron Doerksen said a 10-year deal "almost unheard of in the airline industry." He said that the agreement was forged way before the 2015 expiry date, he believed it "signals a meaningful improvement in relations between the company and its pilots."

Chris Murray, analyst from AltaCorp Capital Inc, said the development could set a precedent to other airline firms that contract deals could be discussed and renewed without disruptions.

Benjamin Smith, Air's Canada president of passenger airlines, said in a news release that the new 10-year agreement with the pilots, once ratified, will become an important development that will allow the airline to further accelerate the implementation of business strategy and support long-term profitable growth for the benefit of both groups.

Meantime, Air Canada's union representing call centre and airport workers said that while circumstances are different for each union, it was surprised the pilots agreed to such tentative deal.

If in case it offered the same number of years for a signing agreement, Leslie Dias, national representative for 3,900 airline members of Unifor, said they won't be signing with Air Canada "now or ever." The union's five-year contract expires in February.