‘No information’ from Sunwing after flight home to Sask. goes wrong

What began as a week-long dream vacation to the Dominican Republic for Saskatoon’s Leah Bumphrey ended in a nightmare flight back to Saskatchewan.

Bumphrey said she booked a Sunwing vacation to the Dominican Republic through a local travel agent some time ago. While the vacation went well, the return home did not. After boarding her plane back to Saskatoon, Bumphrey said she and other passengers were told there weren’t enough flight crew members available for the number of passengers on the plane.

“(There was) just a terrible lack of communication,” Bumphrey said. “All we kept getting was ‘There’s going to be more information. There’s going to be more information.’”

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A Sunwing flight to Regina was also scheduled to leave at the same time, and eventually 26 passengers from the full Saskatoon flight were, as Bumphrey put it, “volun-told” to board the Regina flight instead.

Bumphrey said there were several families with children on the Saskatoon flight, including one older couple with a special needs child who didn’t understand what was happening or what would happen once the Regina flight landed with the Saskatoon passengers on board.

“They heard their name from a podium. No one was able to explain it to them,” she said. “I was able to help this older couple and just tell them ‘Do not accept that you’re going to be going to Regina.’ It would have just been debilitating for the family.”

Bumphrey said her group volunteered to take the place of some of the passengers who couldn’t or wouldn’t switch planes. The Regina-bound plane sat on the tarmac in the heat for hours, she said, while paperwork was completed, and passengers moved from one plane to another.

Her luggage remained on the tarmac in the meantime.

Once the alternate flight landed in the Queen city it was midnight Friday on morning. Bumphrey said they were assured their bags would be in Saskatoon, and after even more confusion at the airport the passengers found a bus waiting to take them to Saskatoon.

The group finally arrived in Saskatoon just before 4 a.m. on Friday.

“To come back to -40 C with the windchill and half the people are still in shorts because their luggage has their winter coats in it – well suddenly you’re on a bus on a Saskatchewan highway, and when we got to the (Saskatoon) airport, there was no luggage,” she said.

Bumphrey said one of the 26 passengers had a tracking tag in their luggage which indicated it had never left Puerto Plata. According to the tag, the luggage is still at the Dominican airport three days later.

So far, Bumphrey said, no one from Sunwing has reached out and offered any explanation. A text message indicated the flight delays were a weather-related cancellation, which she dismissed, saying that was not what the flight crew told the passengers.

She said she’s not sure when she’ll ever get her luggage back.

“We haven’t had anyone reach out to us, which is further disappointing,” Bumphrey added.

While WestJet owns Sunwing, a request for comment from WestJet was directed to Sunwing’s media reps. As of publication, no one from Sunwing has responded.