Sunwing passengers stranded by the airline’s sudden cancellation of all southbound flights from Toronto Pearson Airport continue to share stories of travel chaos and sleepless nights as they desperately try to get home.
Ashley Maclellan-Chartrand, who is six months pregnant, said her Sunwing flight home from Cancun was cancelled three times.
She finally touched down at Pearson Airport early Wednesday morning, where hundreds of angry and exhausted travellers converged amid mountains of luggage in Terminal 3.
“Actually, my best friend who was with me, she described it as apocalyptic,” she told CityNews. “If you went for a walk down the airport, all you saw was hundreds of abandoned baggage.”
To make matters worse, she says only one overwhelmed Sunwing staff member was on site who began chanting “Get our bags!”
At one point, Ashley says she took a nap on the dirty floor while waiting for their luggage.
“We were waiting for our announcement, we were going to just have the luggage mailed to us, but that announcement never came…”
It was second straight day of cancellation as Sunwing struggles with the backlog caused by last week’s winter storm and Monday’s Delta plane crash at Pearson.
The Airline says the “necessary decision was made to prioritize the safe return of customers currently delayed in destinations.”
“We understand this decision impacts our customers’ vacation plans and sincerely apologize for the disruption. Our team continues to work diligently to minimize further impact on our operations and support affected passengers.”
Wayne Smith, Travel Expert, Toronto Metropolitan University, said Sunwing simply doesn’t have enough planes to deal with backlogs.
“They can’t charter enough planes to be able to pick up the extra service, so therefore this is sort of their only choice in the matter because they’re a low cost carrier and they have limited resources,” he said.
Rose Latendresse and her husband are among many others trying to get home from Punta Cana Since Sunday, telling Citynews they’ve all been dealing with limited hotel capacity.
“We’re old,” she said. “We can’t be, you know, getting up 2:30 a.m., you know, wondering, are we going to get a room? What are we going to do? Are we sleeping on the beach?”
CityNews has also been communicating with another family stranded in Dominican Republic. They are travelling with seniors and several young children, including a six-month-old baby.
After days of little sleep and a dwindling supply of diapers, they finally booked flights home with Air Canada at a staggering cost of more than $12,000.
Sunwing is offering full refunds within 21 business days for those who have had their vacations cancelled and says it’s also actively working to reunite passengers with their bags as soon as possible.
The airline has not yet said when departing flights will continue.