Radio silence, conveyor belt beds and missing clothing: Thousands of Sunwing travelers remain stranded on day 2 of system outage


David Dzernyk, 46, thought that by Tuesday morning he’d be a full day into his Punta Cana vacation and already relaxing by the pool, mojito in hand as the bright yellow Caribbean sun seared a tan into his back.

“But instead,” he said, popping a limp french fry into his mouth, “I’m here in the airport with strangers.”

For at least the second day in a row, Dzernyk, his family, the strangers he mentioned and thousands of other would-be Sunwing vacationers, both in Toronto and abroad, remained stranded.

Since Sunday, when customers first started griping about flight delays over social media, passengers have been stuck in place, either waiting to leave for the sun or return from it. Meanwhile the company says a “system outage” has affected flight operations it is scrambling to resolve.

“Our team has been working day and night to find alternate ways to get customers to their destination or on return flights home,” Sunwing Media wrote to the Star in an email. “We sincerely apologize to all of our customers whose travel plans have been impacted.”

Passengers sleep on conveyer belts at Toronto Pearson Airport on Tuesday.

To try and get customers out of airports and onto plans, the email said, it was going to process their flights manually as another company tried to resolve the systems issue.

“We have successfully processed upwards of 15 flights manually since yesterday, with the goal to manually process as many more flights as possible today, subject to airport restrictions, curfews and any required crew reassignments,” Sunwing said.

But, in the meantime, passengers should expect additional delays, according to the email. Late Tuesday, Sunwing’s Twitter account said it was offering “impacted customers the ability to make a one time change to their departure date with no fees.”

In its email to the Star, the company urged customers to sign up for “flight alerts on Sunwing.ca” to get additional information.

At Toronto Pearson Airport, Terminal 3 was awash with travelers trying to find a spot to rest, eat, entertain their fidgety children or hold themselves back from going stir crazy as they waited, some in check-in lines that hadn’t moved in hours . Others slept on conveyor belts that were turned off. Still more spread out in corners, rested their heads on luggage or stared off into the distance, bereft.

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When Dzernyk and his family — two kids, his wife and her mother — got to Terminal 3 early Monday for their mid-morning flight to Punta Cana, he stopped and looked around.

“I knew immediately something was up,” he said.

I have waved off any reservations. At any rate, he was tired after the trip to Toronto from his home in Estevan, Saskatchewan, a city two hours south of Regina. It was his family’s third attempt at a vacation since just before COVID began, and they weren’t going to let anything steal their sunshine.

But the terminal was in chaos, Dzernyk said. People were everywhere. Luggage was piled up in corners. Anger was palpable. There didn’t seem to be any organization to anything, he said.

Since he didn’t know what was going on, Dzernyk tried to check in on his app. But it didn’t work. Neither did the airport’s computer kiosks. And when he tried to ask a “Sunwing human” what was going on, he said, no one knew. They told him to wait. There was a delay.

And soon, he said, they told him there was another delay, and then another. And another. By nightfall, he and his family decided to check into a hotel nearby and wait there. But he returned every hour or so to the terminal by himself to check for information. He said even though the app was back online, it gave him different times for when his flight might actually depart. And he didn’t know what to believe. He figured the most reliable information was on that big overhead screen at the terminal.

He stood right beneath it early Tuesday, eating his cold fast food off a luggage cart as his family tried to sleep on their jackets in a corner of the terminal.

He said he was shocked the company was handling the situation so badly. As an entrepreneur himself, Dzernyk said, he always has backup plans.

“They really should have had a grasp,” he said. “You’d think they’d have a plan B. But, it didn’t even look like they had a plan A.”

Passengers wait to be allowed onto their Sunwing flights after some have been delayed over a day at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga.

Michelle Dolliver — stuck in Pearson’s Terminal 3, waiting to board a flight to Punta Cana

Like Dzernyk, Michelle Dolliver couldn’t understand why Sunwing was having so much trouble.

Nonetheless, she said she and her kids were hopeful they’d see the inside of a plane by the end of the night.

Dolliver, a single mom, and her three kids left Orillia early Monday, driving to Pearson to make their mid-morning flight to the Dominican Republic, only to meet the chaos her fellow Sunwing customers described once she got to the terminal.

By Monday evening, she and her kids had a bad feeling about their vacation and tried to get one of the vouchers Sunwing said it was giving out for a night’s stay in a nearby hotel.

But there were none left by the time she went to grab one, Dolliver said. She had no choice but to check in and pay the $450 to stay the night. It was late and snowing, and she wasn’t going to drive back to Orillia only to discover she had to be back at Pearson early the next morning.

“They told me to take a picture of the bill,” she said, referring to airport staff. “They said I’d probably get reimbursed. Probably.”

Michelle Sadowski — currently in Dominican Republic, stuck for 30 hours

Michelle Sadowski is in the opposite situation of Michelle Dolliver’s — she is already in the Dominican Republic and wants to get out.

Sadowski and her husband, along with their two-year-old child and her in-laws, had already been away for more than a week and it was time, she said, to return to regular life. Everything is harder with a baby, she said, which is part of why they’re frustrated they haven’t been able to get home — or to get any information about why they’ve been waiting to board their flight for more than 30 hours .

“If we didn’t have Twitter, we would have absolutely no idea what was going on,” Sadowski said. “We would be just standing here with our hands in the air.”

Along with countless others abroad, Sadowski has resorted to crowdsourcing information about their flight delays. And, she said, everyone online was helping by sharing details of what to expect, when their flights might leave, and when they might finally board their plane.

It was only when they were preparing to head to the airport that her family found out about the delays, she said. They tried looking for flights on other airlines but everything was expensive. “It was, like $6,000,” she said, “if we wanted to get on a flight” sooner.

As a concession for this debacle, Sadowski said, Sunwing was offering a $500 per person voucher they can each use toward another Sunwing trip. But after this travel fiasco, Sadowski said she isn’t jumping at the chance to use hers.

“There’s a lot of things I would do in my life again before ever traveling Sunwing,” she said.

Hadi Mahjoub and Jessica Prosper — back in Toronto after a 27-hour delay in Mexico

Hadi Mahjoub was in his home in Toronto late Tuesday wearing nothing but his underwear after making a deal with Sunwing that have left his luggage somewhere between Mexico and Toronto.

“I have nothing to wear,” he said. “Literally, I have no clothes right now.”

After getting to the airport in Mexico and finding out about the Sunwing delays, Mahjoub said that airport staff gave him and his girlfriend, Jessica Prosper, a choice: They could either keep their luggage and weather the delays. Or, check in their bags right away, hope they make it home to Toronto when they do, and get on any flight as soon as possible.

The catch to extend their vacation with their bags in tow? They pay for their own accommodations for the next few days in Mexico, Mahjoub said the staff told him.

He and Prosper chose to ditch their baggage and spend one night in a highway-side hotel that gave them $15 US for food, he said.

But, Prosper said, in the end, they got a boom deal. They weren’t as lucky as other passengers on their flight home, who, she said, got to spend the night at all-inclusive hotels.

“It wasn’t necessarily fair,” Prosper said. “There was no pool or anything like that.”

Tania Cameron — stuck in Cuba for an extra night

Tania Cameron checked in with the Star from the lobby of the resort she’s staying at in Cuba — the only spot where she can connect to Wi-Fi and check the status of her flight home.

“It’s strange,” she said, “getting my news from social media before I get news from the airlines.”

Cameron was supposed to leave Cuba on Tuesday and land in Winnipeg that night at 10:30 pm But their flight was delayed until 12:30 am on Wednesday and that meant they wouldn’t arrive home until four in the morning, she said.

Cameron didn’t hold her breath, she said, especially when a Sunwing representative told her not to check out of her room before more information became available.

What happened next? Another delay.

“She said nope,” Cameron said, of what the representative told her. “You’re staying another night.”

Cameron isn’t complaining, however. She’s happy about an extra day in the sun. “It’s better than sitting at an airport wondering what time we’ll leave.”

Alessia Passafiume is a GTA-based staff reporter for the Star. Reach Alessia via email: [email protected]
Michele Henry is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star, writing health and education stories. Follow her on Twitter: @michelehenry

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