A shortage of pilots is being blamed for 27 flight cancellations by Canadian Regional airline on Sunday, about 5 times the normal cancellation rate.

"There's good days and there's bad days. Sunday just happened to be one of our bad days", says Dean Brawn of Canadian.

The airline has lost more than 20 pilots to other companies over the last few weeks. Many are going to the upstart, WestJet, which has been expanding.

Brawn says the competition is tough. "Canadian Regional is in essence a stepping stone for a number of pilots. So there's usually a lot of opportunity within the industry, and it just happens that we're currently going through a large spurt of growth within the industry."

The airline has been training new pilots, says Brawn. Some started flying this week.