LETTER: Sunwing Airlines disturb vacation plans

SooToday received the following letter from William Nash regarding Sunwing Airlines operations.

Since 2011 my wife and I have enjoyed a week or two every winter in the best-kept secret for a safe and sunny winter destination, the friendly island country of Cuba. The popular travel agent for this vacation has always been Sunwing Airlines, mainly because of the many schedule options they offered and the fact that they would fly directly out of the Sault Ste. Marie airport.

After missing this winter vacation a couple of years in a row due to COVID travel restrictions, we were happy to know we would be able to return to Cuba this February and booked our vacation this past October. Prices were still comparable to pre-COVID prices, and little seemed to change over that time. The snow storms that cancelled both outgoing and returning flights for many Sunwing customers at Christmas only seemed to be a short-term 'glitch' to Sunwing operations when in reality, it was the unveiling of more Sunwing trouble to come.

Sunwing travellers were stranded for up to a week with no returning flights in site, passengers were left to fend for themselves at connecting airports in foreign countries, and Sunwing started unilaterally cancelling flights out of many cities across Canada: Saskatoon, Regina, Halifax, Sudbury, and North Bay to name a few. Those of us departing from Sault Ste. Marie to Cayo Coco Cuba seemed to be spared (perhaps because we are deemed an international airport), and we awaited our February departures.

Some of those Sault Ste. Marie passengers that I know of were going to Cuba to get married; some were taking their grandchildren on a 'once-in-a-lifetime' vacation, while others, like myself, were just wanting to get away from the snow for a while. We were not spared our own version of Sunwing customer service disaster when we received an email from Sunwing Saturday, Jan. 14 to inform us our vacations (some of which were scheduled to start in less than a month) had a scheduling change. Sunwing would no longer fly out of Sault Ste. Marie at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday mornings (arriving at the Cuban airport at 1:45 p.m.), but would now depart Sault Ste. Marie at 5 p.m. and did not touch down in Cuba until 9:05 p.m. By the time we reached the resort and checked in, it would be nearly midnight on Tuesday, and we would lose the first day of our vacation. To add insult to injury, our return flight to the Sault leaves Cuba three hours and 40 minutes earlier, forcing us into a hasty breakfast before leaving for the Cuban airport and cutting another chunk out of our vacation.

Air traveller's protection rights are administered by the Canadian Transportation Agency, but the laws allow Sunwing to abuse the loopholes in the legislation to disrupt the lives and plans of customers who have paid them thousands of dollars with no recourse or compensation.

Various Facebook resort travel pages have been inundated with complaints all about Sunwing. Thousands of Canadians are confused, disappointed and disgusted with this seemingly heartless and selfish airline. Many people are declaring they will never fly with Sunwing again, and I, for one, am in this group. I will pay more to have a flight out of Toronto with Air Canada if need be rather than risk my time, money, and efforts to put my trust in Sunwing airlines to ensure a trouble-free vacation. Shame on Sunwing.

William Nash

Sault Ste. Marie