About 750 Sunwing passengers consider legal action due to travel delays
CTV
Hundreds of Sunwing Airlines passengers are banding together and mulling a class-action lawsuit after being caught up in a wave of cancellations and lawsuits that left many stranded in tropical destinations.
Hundreds of Sunwing Airlines passengers are banding together and mulling a class-action lawsuit after being caught up in a wave of cancellations and lawsuits that left many stranded in tropical destinations, unable to return to Canada.
A social media group dedicated to organizing the passengers has swollen to 750 members, and organizer Sohail Shahidnia says they are trying to find a lawyer to take the case.
“We just wanted to get home. This is not right,” Shahidnia said in an interview. “We want to make them accountable.”
Shahidnia was among the crowd at the Cancun airport whose return flights had been repeatedly cancelled over Christmas. In recorded video of the airport, hundreds can be heard chanting, “take us home!” In another place in the crowd, a video shows a Sunwing representative threatening to strand a man and his five-month-old child in Mexico “forever” — something for which the airline has since apologized.
Shahidnia and his family booked another flight out and made it home. Many didn’t, caught in a whirlwind of cancellations, a continent-wide storm, as well as a digital communications breakdown that led to many empty seats on some rescue flights.
To top it off, a baggage belt breakdown at Toronto’s Terminal 3 meant thousands of bags piled up in the terminal. Many bags made it to a warehouse near the airport for passengers to pick up, though some travellers have told CTV News Toronto they are still waiting weeks after their flight.
Sunwing has apologized and said its 43 rescue flights have now brought home anyone who was missed in the tough travel season.
