Sunwing System Outage: Hundreds of BC Residents Stranded Due to Flight Delays and Cancellations | The Canadian News

Thousands of passengers are stranded as one of Canada’s largest vacation airlines was hit by a system-wide outage.

Sunwing Airlines said the outage is affecting check-in and boarding and passengers have been stranded trying to get home from their vacations.

Sunwing’s website shows that virtually all flights scheduled for Monday, more than 40, have been delayed, some by more than 12 hours.

BC resident Dani Monaghan was on vacation in Cancun, Mexico and was picked up from his hotel at 2:40 pm on Sunday with his flight scheduled to leave at 6:30 pm and arrive in Vancouver just after 11. pm that same night.

However, he said that when they arrived at the airport, there was a long line at the Sunwing counter.

“It wasn’t until we were standing there for probably an hour or two that we realized there was a bigger problem,” Monaghan said.

She said the main problem has been a lack of communication from Sunwing about what is going on.

Their flight was eventually delayed until Monday, but after two more cancellations, they were told they could be picked up “anytime” and could be on “any flight.”

“So we don’t know when we’re going home,” Monaghan added.

She said they were given a $15 meal coupon, but most passengers couldn’t use it because it could only be redeemed at Starbucks, which was closed, and at a restaurant that was so busy it would take a while to get food. Meanwhile, passengers were told to be ready in 20 minutes to catch a bus to another hotel.

“That’s the universal thing, no one has consistent information,” he said.

Sunwing did not respond to Global News’ request for comment, but the company issued a statement on Twitter.

Kelowna resident Andrew Lipton is also stranded in Cancun, trying to get home.

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He told Global News in an email that customer service at the airport was lousy and they weren’t getting any useful information.

They too were eventually bussed back to a hotel for Sunday night, but as of Monday morning they were left in limbo like Monaghan and her friend.

“Because I have to go back to work, just like grandparents taking care of our two-year-olds and one-year-olds, I frantically searched for a new airline to take us home,” Lipton said. “Over $2,000 Canadian on Air Canada. There are three seats left on the flight. I reserve?!? Yes.

“I am lucky and fortunate enough to be able to do this. But I will save my receipts 100 percent to send to Sunwing.”

Monaghan said she and her friend have now formed a small group of passengers so they can help each other and access information.

“We just communicate with each other and nobody really gets mad,” he said. “We are frustrated and just want to go home. We had a great holiday and this is ending on a bit of a sour note for a lot of people.”

She said she knows there are worse places to be stranded than Mexico, but with Sunwing’s lack of communication, they can’t just go back to a hotel and relax. They are constantly told that they must be ready to go soon.

He added that the lack of media coverage of what was happening was also very frustrating.

“We’ve been in the lobby since 10 am, waiting,” he said.

“We do not know and are not receiving flight email information. People on Twitter tell us to check our flight status, that keeps changing or the alerts aren’t there. We’re getting conflicting information through the hotline, anyone who shows up in an orange shirt, we ask them. The people at Planet Hollywood have had a little bit more information because I think they know more behind the scenes and even the guys that are on the buses.”

He said they’ve been spending a lot of time at Planet Hollywood, but don’t think they’ll be flying on Monday.

“It’s just been kept light because there are a lot of people who can get upset right away and there’s nothing anyone can do about it,” he added. “If it is a computer system, and I understand that, we cannot rush technology and it happened over the long weekend of Easter. There were probably three people working at Sunwing yesterday.”