Hundreds of Canadian holidaymakers have been left stranded or facing massive delays after their airline Sunwing suffered a major data security breach which has left them with grounded planes and manually checking in passengers.
Sunwing confirmed on Wednesday it was continuing to check in passengers manually after the server networks it used, from its service provider, Airline Choice had been majorly compromised earlier this week.
Many passengers took to social media regarding the incidents of delayed flights, holidays being shortened and lengthened by the disruption, with many facing additional costs, loss of earnings and some others still not knowing when they would be returning to Canada.
The Toronto based firm said it has sub charted some aircraft from other Canadian carriers such as WestJet and Air Transat to help ease the backlog of passengers. “Our teams have been working hard to get more planes off the ground today. Between manual check-ins and sub-chartered aircraft, 26 planes have departed so far today with another 6 expected to depart tonight.” It claimed, just after midnight on Wednesday night / Thursday morning.
Whilst the airline is offering the possibility of changing flights without a fee, there isn’t a single apology on its site for those disrupted by the chaos and system outage. Its contact pages ‘sunwingcares’ seems to be a complete misnomer in light of its current situation.
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