Holidaymakers long grounded

Hundreds of Quebec Sunwing passengers had their flights delayed for hours and hours due to a computer glitch that crippled its flight operations.

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“There’s no one here dying, but it’s the waiting and the uncertainty that’s nagging. Everything is handled on time,” criticizes carrier Martial Jomphe, stuck in Cancún, Mexico.

The latter was to return to Quebec on Sunday evening, but his boarding was repeatedly postponed until the next day, more than 24 hours after his scheduled departure time.

The delay is related to a problem with a Sunwing IT provider that handles passenger boarding and check-in operations, the company confirmed in writing.

Airline Choice, a company that offers this type of service and which counts the carrier among its customers, did not respond to questions from the Log.

It was therefore not possible to know whether it was a simple failure or a cyberattack.

The problem nevertheless caused the delay of a dozen flights to take off or land in Montreal and Quebec since Sunday evening.

The airline’s operations were also affected elsewhere in the country, as well as in Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.

In the end, “perhaps Sunwing is not the source of the problem, but that does not prevent them from having to inform and accommodate their passengers”, recalls Benoit Duguay, professor in the Department of Urban Studies. and tourism from the University of Quebec in Montreal.

In single file

At Montréal-Trudeau airport, vacationers had to do their check in in person and received handwritten boarding passes.

This significantly longer check-in method caused a queue several tens of meters long to form.

“It seems to me that we are advanced enough not to delay a flight just because of a computer problem,” sighed Éric Richer, a father from Laval who will think twice before buying another flight to the south with Sunwing.

In the hustle and bustle of Montreal-Trudeau airport, a traveler tried to boost the morale of the troops by playing Mambo No. 5 and sweetly on his little speaker.

bitter disappointment

Nevertheless, many people who booked a one-week all-inclusive package were disappointed to lose a precious vacation day.

“And to have known, we would not have paid for a hotel in Montreal the day before our flight…”, added Jessica Boily, originally from Roberval, in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean.

The Quebecer had planned everything to celebrate her thirty-fifth birthday in Mexico today. However, she resigned herself to spending it in a hotel room near the airport—, in Montreal.

His flight to Cancún, Mexico, which was scheduled to take off at 11:15 a.m. on Monday, was postponed to 8 a.m. Tuesday morning at the latest.

She still does not know, like many others, if she can be compensated.