More delays at Pearson as Sunwing works to resolve network-wide issue

It’s another day of big crowds at Pearson Airport as Sunwing Airlines continues to try and resolve a network-wide system glitch impacting a growing number of passengers.

Dozens of flights from Toronto to vacation destinations have been delayed over the past two days due to a computer issue affecting flight check-in and boarding. Some passengers were starting to be invited to check in with the airline late Tuesday morning after waiting since Monday.

Sunwing has taken to social media to say that passengers can choose to change their departure date up to June 23, for no extra charges.

“While our systems provider continues to work on resolving the system outage, we continue to manually process as many flights as possible but expect further delays. Please note that all impacted passengers with flight delays over three hours will be compensated,” the airline tweeted on Tuesday.

In an update, Sunwing said 21 planes have departed today, and have 13 set for departure on Wednesday.

In a statement provided to CityNews, the airline says “our check-in systems provider continues to experience a system outage affecting our flight operations.”

“Our team has been working day and night to find alternate ways to get customers to their destination or on return flights home. We have successfully processed upwards of 15 flights manually since yesterday, with the goal to manually process as many more flights as possible today.”

According to the Toronto Pearson website, there were 16 delayed Sunwing flights as of Tuesday morning. Two other Tuesday flights to Cuba were cancelled.

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Passengers up in arms over delays, lack of communication

One passenger tells CityNews she was supposed to fly to Cuba on Monday morning but the flight kept getting pushed back. She was back at the airport early on Tuesday and was told by the airline that the flight will depart at some point during the day.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” she says. “There are Sunday passengers here, there are Monday passengers here, and now we are in line with people who are flying out today.”

The biggest complaint from many travellers has been communication from the airline. Many say they are learning about network problems through social media posts from other travellers.

Navin Monteiro was attempting to fly to Cuba with his wife on Sunday and ended up spending an evening in a hotel near the airport after their flight was pushed back numerous times.

Monteiro says they were notified that their afternoon flight had been delayed 20 minutes prior to boarding. It was subsequently delayed again in the evening and rescheduled several times on Monday with little information from the airline about what the issue was.

“We had to fight to get hotel accommodations,” says Monteiro. “They were only giving us either taxi chits or food vouchers, no hotel accommodations.”

The network issues are also impacting flights back to Canada with one traveller tweeting “stranded in Punta Cana for a second day, our flight has been delayed for a second time.”

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Sunwing’s website showed virtually all flights scheduled for Monday — more than 40 — had been delayed, some by more than 12 hours. Flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 showed no Sunwing planes in the air for hours-long stretches throughout the day.

The airline is encouraging all customers with departing flights to check their flight status before heading to the airport while the issues persist.

“Alternate arrangements for hotel accommodations and airport transfers are being coordinated alongside our destination management company where necessary,” says the airline. “Best attempts are being made to notify passengers of the impact to their flights where possible.”

Sunwing says passengers could be entitled to compensation under the Air Passenger Protection Regulations and more information on refunds can be found at Sunwing.ca.

No timeline has been provided for a return to normal service.

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With files from CityNews reporter Kaitlin Lee