Several Canadians stuck in sun destinations in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America due to a computer security issue affecting Sunwing Airlines say the situation on the ground remains chaotic and confusing.
The Toronto airline said Wednesday it was continuing to manually check in passengers after server networks belonging to one of its providers, Airline Choice, were compromised. The problem, however, leaves many travelers waiting at airports.
“At first we thought it was good to have an extra night, but now I don’t find it fun anymore,” said Tania Cameron, who was in Varadero, Cuba, on Wednesday waiting to board the ship. a return flight.
Mme Cameron said she and her sister-in-law had seats on a Sunwing flight to Winnipeg scheduled to depart at 7 p.m. Tuesday. They had first been informed that the flight would be delayed until midnight, then a Sunwing representative advised them to return to the hotel, as the flight would not leave until the following day. However, when they returned to the airport on Wednesday, they found the flight had left at midnight regardless.
The two women still expected to go home on Wednesday, but only because someone heard their story and offered to give up their seats on a plane to Calgary. “He was a very nice guy, his name is Paul, said Mme Cameron. We will have to pay for our own flights from Calgary to Winnipeg, but I don’t care. We will find a solution. We have to go home. »
Sunwing said it was working with other airlines, including WestJet and Air Transat, to find additional planes and reduce the delay at some airports. The airline continues to offer affected customers the option to change their departure date once, free of charge, for flights scheduled between April 19 and 22.
Toronto resident Ruppi Rana said there was so little information available to passengers that it was difficult to decide what to do. He and his wife are trying to get home from Cancun, but they couldn’t reach a Sunwing representative on the phone and rely on social media as their primary source for updates. “It’s not knowing that’s the hardest part,” Rana said. Part of us just wants to book with WestJet or Air Canada and be done with it, but that seems like a very expensive decision. »
While Rana said he has empathy for Sunwing and its staff, he was surprised the airline didn’t have better contingency plans in the event of a data security issue. “I work in software, so I’m really surprised they weren’t better prepared,” he said. If your system is hacked, you should be aware of this. »
A “terrible” situation
In an interview with CP24 television on Tuesday, Sunwing President Mark Williams apologized for the inconvenience caused by the outage, calling it a “terrible situation”.
In a statement provided to The Canadian Press on Wednesday, Sunwing also expressed regret. “We apologize to our customers for the ongoing delays and thank them for their patience and understanding during this unfortunate situation,” the company said, adding that further updates on the outage would be communicated to customers.
Airline Choice — the third party whose systems were hacked — is an Illinois-based company that provides airlines with a technology platform to streamline passenger processing, self-service and compliance processes.
In an emailed statement Wednesday, the company described the breach as a “data security event” that affected a limited number of its systems. “As a precaution, we have taken some systems offline to secure our environment. We also immediately launched an investigation to determine the nature and extent of the event,” the company said.
Airline Choice added that it had already started restoring several features. For its part, Sunwing pointed out that this server problem has also affected other operators around the world.
Passengers whose flights were delayed more than three hours by these events may be entitled to compensation under federal air passenger protection regulations.