Sunwing passengers left out in the cold

When someone decides they wouldn’t take a free flight to Florida, it’s a sign the company’s customer service is suboptimal.

Leah Profitt of Coldbrook, N.S., and her family are among those left pondering the pleasures of Nova Scotia in March after their Sunwing flight to Orlando was cancelled.

“They were one of the only airlines offering direct flights out of Halifax, and the price was good, as well,” said Profitt, who can’t recall travelling with Sunwing in the past. “I didn’t realize there was an issue with the flight until (recently), I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw a Global article about somebody else here in Nova Scotia, a family that had the same thing happen to them. So then I started looking on Sunwing for the flight status and nothing was coming up for incoming or departing.

“I was like, ‘what is going on?’ And my sister actually had booked the flights all together, so I asked her if she had heard anything from Sunwing about our flight maybe being cancelled. And they had sent an email that just looked like they were changing the flight numbers,” she explained. “If you read down further, it said they had decided to cancel this plane. ... So I called that night and they were like, ‘yeah, your flight’s cancelled, do you want a refund or do you want to go somewhere else?’”

Sunwing has chopped its schedule of flights to Florida and Cuba from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

“The cancellation and consolidation of select Sunwing flights departing from Atlantic Canada airports in Halifax, Fredericton and Moncton to southern destinations this winter season are

“I don’t know that if they offered me a free flight if I would even consider it.” Leah Profitt

to ensure we are delivering the standards of service our customers both expect and deserve when travelling with Sunwing,” the airline’s public relations department wrote in an email to SaltWire Network.

Profitt said she asked if there were other direct flights to Orlando available, and when she was told there weren’t, she opted for a refund.

“But it’s 30 days to get your money back,” she said. “They hold on to your money for 30 days, so now my concern is what happens if they go bankrupt? Because there’s been lots of talk about that, or someone else buying them out, which would be OK, but if they are suffering financially, are we going to be out

that couple of thousand dollars?”

Sunwing said it is not planning any further reductions to its winter schedule “at this time” and that it looks forward to “returning customers to the destinations they love and rebuilding a fulsome program for the 2023-2024 winter season.”

Profitt said she paid for seat selection the day before the email arrived informing them of the cancellation.

“And if you clicked on the confirmation email, it was still coming up your trip to Orlando is 77 days away. So

even their system hadn’t been locked down.”

Profitt’s group hadn’t paid for any other parts of their trip, like Disney passes, in advance, and has decided to walk away from plans for a spring trip. She’s so unhappy with Sunwing she doesn’t think she’ll ever travel with the airline.

“I don’t know, I truly don’t know, because I feel like that was handled so poorly that I don’t know that I would,” she said. “I don’t know that if they offered me a free flight if I would even consider it.”