As hundreds of Canadians rush home after their Sunwing flights from Mexico were canceled last week, a passenger rights advocate says stranded travelers should consider legal action if they are not not compensated by the airline.
Gabor Lukacs, chairman and founder of the Air Passenger Rights Group, said passengers struggling with canceled flights and insufficient information about when they might be changed should buy their own return tickets from another carrier and keep carefully keep records and receipts of their expenses.
If Sunwing refuses to compensate them under the federal Air Passenger Protection Regulations, they should take the matter to small claims court, Lukacs said in an interview.
“We’re at a point in Canada where suing an airline isn’t just about money, it’s about changing the way they operate. It’s about behavior modification,” he said. he declares. “And this is where the government is failing in its duty to the public.”
He said passengers should also phone their local MP and demand better enforcement of passenger rights in Canada.
Last Sunday, hundreds of Canadian travelers were stranded in Cancun, Mexico, after Sunwing canceled their return flights. Some described being dragged from hotel to hotel, sometimes arriving to find there was no room reserved for them, while Sunwing officials provided inaccurate and incomplete information about when they could go home.
Sheldon de Souza said in an interview Monday that a similar situation is playing out in Puerto Vallarta on the west coast of Mexico. He said he traveled there with his wife, three children and three family friends on Dec. 14, with a scheduled return flight with Sunwing on Dec. 21.
That flight was canceled, although only some passengers were notified, he said. Several days of incomplete information and confusion from Sunwing followed, he said.
He and a group of other passengers were moved to different hotels and told to check in every day and report to the lobby every hour in case there was any news of a flight.
Sunwing officials at the hotel would say there was an upcoming flight and then, hours later, say it had been cancelled, de Souza said. He said that in the meantime, flights would not appear on the airport’s daily schedule, leading de Souza to believe he was being misled.
He said he booked himself a seat on an Air Canada flight to Calgary on Dec. 23, which cost him about $1,000. His wife, children and their friends managed to get a Sunwing flight home on Boxing Day, but only because they started showing up at the airport asking for a seat, he said. .
He said they took seats on a Sunwing flight to Edmonton late on Christmas Day, even reaching the gate with boarding passes. But then officials said the crew exceeded their maximum allowable working hours and the plane was cancelled.
“It was like Sunwing just gave up on us, they didn’t care,” de Souza said. “It’s not even that they made an effort, they forgot about us.”
He said there were “several hundred” Canadians stranded in Puerto Vallarta when he left, and some are likely still there.
Federal Air Passenger Protection Regulations require airlines to pay up to $1,000 in compensation for cancellations or significant delays that arise from reasons within the carrier’s control when notification arrives 14 days or less before departure .
Lukacs said Sunwing was unlikely to pay voluntarily. The Canadian Transportation Agency, which acts as the federal airline regulator, isn’t doing enough to hold airlines accountable, he said, so they don’t feel much pressure to obey the rules.
Federal law grants agency enforcement officers the power to investigate companies and individuals they believe have violated the rules and issue fines of up to $25,000.
The regulator’s website shows that in the past five years only one carrier – WestJet, for 55 cases at the end of January – has been fined for failing to provide adequate compensation to passengers. The total fine was $11,000.
Lukacs said the agency does not impose enough fines. “The government is turning a blind eye to airline misconduct,” he said.
Neither Sunwing nor the Canadian Transportation Agency immediately responded to a request for comment.
Sunwing said in an email on Sunday that it had canceled flights due to bad weather and was trying to get people home “in the coming days”.
“Our teams are working hard to rehabilitate customers by servicing aircraft where possible, in addition to arranging alternative hotels and transfers for those with overnight delays,” says the email.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on December 26, 2022.
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