Sunwing cancellation third round of bad flight luck for P.A. family

By Susan McNeil, paNOW

A Prince Albert woman along with her husband and toddler son are losing faith in the Canadian airline industry after being burned three times in three months.

Stephanie Korpan said the string of bad luck started in November after she and her family landed on a WestJet flight in Calgary, on their way to California to visit a cousin.

“Twenty-five minutes before our flight from Calgary to San Francisco was to depart, it got cancelled,” Korpan said.

After waiting for several hours to re-claim their luggage, they were told to phone WestJet in order to get another flight.

“But it turns out there was this huge systems outage and there were 250 flights in the Calgary airport that were cancelled that weekend,” she said.

Given the volume of stranded travellers, they could not get through by phone or talk to anyone in person, so they found themselves in Calgary at -30 C with no winter wear or car seat for their 18-month-old.

Stephanie Korpan has had some recent bad luck when it comes to flights with Sunwing just the latest in a series of disappointmnts. Her 18-month-old son is pictured at the Calgary airport. (submitted photo/Stephanie Korpan)

Korpan said they were then told to stand in line for meal and hotel vouchers at the customer service counter which they did, for nine hours with the toddler in a stroller.

There were no vouchers so instead, they were told they would be reimbursed at $150 per night for a hotel room and $45 per day per adult for meals. The baby received no food allowance because he was to be sitting on a parent’s lap in the plane.

Following that the Korpan’s were given a choice between continuing their holiday, which would take four days and multiple stops across the US, or to return back to the Saskatoon airport.

“With a baby and all these unknowns, we opted to go back home,” Korpan said. But that was a Sunday night and there were no flights for another 48 hours.

After spending about $900 out of pocket and submitting their claim to WestJet on November 8 as soon as they were home, they still have not received any money.

More than the financial cost and stress though is the face that she will not meet her cousin’s new baby while he is still an infant. It will be at least a year before they accumulate enough vacation time to try that visit again.

It will also cost more as the toddler will be over age two and they will have to buy a seat for him.

But the bad luck didn’t end there for the Korpan’s however as they looked forward to a visit from Stephanie’s mother over Christmas.

“I chalked it up to a one-off, it was crazy. WestJet had the worst outage in history, it is what it is,” she said, “but at least my mom is coming here for Christmas.”

The planned flight from Toronto to Saskatoon on December 23 did not go ahead due to the major blizzard hitting Ontario and Quebec.

Fate was not yet done, however.

“At least we were going to Mexico at the end of January. We were really looking forward to that,” Korpan said. “And that also got cancelled yesterday with no notice.”

Korpan highly doubts Sunwing, the company they had booked to travel with because they have more direct flights, will be fully operational in February or even March.

That vacation is supposed to be reimbursed but the couple is still debating whether they should take the risk or not.

“We’ve completely lost confidence in Sunwing but they’re the only ones that offer direct flights,” Korpan said.

Sunwing announced on Thursday that all of its flights out of Saskatchewan would be cancelled until Feb. 3, a surprise move that drew a response from Premier Scott Moe.

Korpan said the only notification they received was hearing it on the news and no one from the company has contacted them to tell them their flights were cancelled.

“It’s crazy. It’s not just me and it’s not just Saskatoon. It’s Calgary, it’s Toronto, it’s Quebec. It’s not just Sunwing, it’s WestJet, it’s Air Canada,” she said.

To her, the Canadian aviation industry is in disarray.

“It’s not just weather. They’re straight up saying we don’t have the planes; we don’t have the crew. So why are you scheduling flights that you can’t man?” Korpan asked.