It was supposed to be a relaxing and fun vacation to a sunny destination to celebrate their anniversary.
However, John Tiu and his wife’s trip has been plagued by flight delays the moment they left Halifax. They are now stranded in an airport in the Dominican Republic.
“It’s like a traumatic experience, too, to not know when you’re flying back home,” Tiu said Thursday afternoon.
He’s among hundreds of Sunwing Airlines customers dealing with cancellations and delays after back-to-back winter storms hit Eastern Canada and a Delta plane crash at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport that shut down two runways.
Sunwing cancelled all southbound departure flights from Toronto for a second straight day, as well as those leaving from Montreal, as it deals with the backlog and focuses on passengers stranded in tropical destinations.
Sunwing flights in and out of other Canadian airports, including ones in the Maritimes, show delays and cancellations.
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Tiu, whose week-long vacation has stretched into nine days, says he feels Sunwing hasn’t properly communicated with them.
“Those two times that we were there (at the airport), we were not told what to do, or that we’re going to fly this day, no apology at all or nothing,” he said.
He adds the airline even forgot to tell them they were rebooked at their hotel after additional delays to their return flight to Canada.
“If we did not come back to the hotel, we would have never known that there was going to be another room booked for us,” he said.
So far, he estimates the couple has racked up about $1,000 in unexpected expenses.
Kelly Rowat in New Brunswick is facing the opposite problem. She’s trying to get to sunny Cayo Coco from wintry Moncton, N.B., and is anxiously checking the online schedule.
She and her husband had their original flight cancelled after multiple delays. At one point, they even received a message saying the flight was indeed going ahead, only to be let down mere minutes later.
“Twenty minutes after the ‘Oh yeah, you’re leaving on time, it’s 7 p.m.’ … to cancelled,” she recalled.
The couple is now rebooked for a flight Saturday but they are not confident they’ll get off the ground.
The situation has riddled her with anxiety but she says she’s hesitant to cancel the trip for fear of losing her money.
“I’m physically and mentally drained and I haven’t even gotten there yet,” she said.
Air passenger rights advocate Gábor Lukács says that Sunwing should be offering their customers alternative flights on another airline and encourages those fighting for compensation to take their cases to small claims court as opposed to the federal regulator.
“They have over 80,000 complaints backlogged. So it will take up to two years to just have your complaint reviewed, let alone decided,” he said.
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Maritimers among those stranded and anxious over Sunwing cancellations
