Thousands of Sunwing passengers left in limbo due to technical glitch

Other airlines called on to help Sunwing Sunwing has called on other airlines for help clearing a backlog of travellers impacted by an issue caused by a cyber security breach.

TORONTO — Thousands of passengers remain stranded abroad and vacations have been delayed for others as Sunwing Airlines continues to struggle with technical issues that began Sunday afternoon.

At Toronto’s Pearson International Airport Tuesday morning, hundreds of passengers waited in long lines, many unsure whether their flights would leave by the end of the day.

“I just would have liked a lot more transparency,” one woman told CTV National News.

The Toronto-based airline company said a network outage with its check-in systems provider continues to ground many flights. As a result, Sunwing says it must manually check-in travellers for their flights.

"Yesterday, they told us to come to the airport at this time," said Ben Azimi, a traveller stuck in Cancun. "We went to the airport … all the kiosks were closed. We went to security. They had no idea."

As of Tuesday morning, the company said 15 out of the more than 40 scheduled flights have been processed.

Sunwing says the outage stems from its check-in systems provider, Airline Choice, which is “working with relevant authorities to find a solution as soon as possible,” according to a statement.

Sunwing is not the only airline to have experienced recent outages. Southwest, American Airlines and United all grappled with outages last year, but those issues were resolved in a matter of hours, not days.

"Different people tell us different things," said Sandra Affleck of Peterborough, Ont. "We haven't had the same story in the two days we've been here."

With her wedding dress draped over her arm, Alyssa de Luca was finally able to check-in for her flight on Tuesday morning. She’s headed to Costa Rica for her wedding on Thursday, but was supposed to leave on Monday.

“It's been challenging,” she said. “But I'm glad we can all go and everyone can go on their vacation, that's important to me.”

Sunwing apologized to passengers "whose travel plans have been impacted" and urged them to sign up for alerts on its website at Sunwing.ca.

"Our team has been working day and night to find alternate ways to get customers to their destination or on return flights home," the company said in a news release.

Whether delayed, trying to leave Canada or stuck down south, passengers continue to complain about what they’re saying is a lack of communication from Sunwing.

“If I wasn’t this tired, I would be livid,” said Josh Smyth in an interview with CTV National News from the Cancun airport. “I would be absolutely fuming.”

Smyth said he is disappointed with the compensation offered to him so far by Sunwing: a $15 voucher.

"When this crisis unfolded for Sunwing they had two options," he said. "They could treat people like human beings ... but it would have cost them money. What they did instead was try to skim their way through it without costing as much money as possible."

Sunwing is urging passengers to hold onto receipts of any costs incurred due to the delays, as they may be entitled to compensation.

With files from Maggie Parkhill, The Canadian Press.