Jamie and Shauna Lowe, originally from Moose Jaw and now living in Saskatoon, have been stuck in Mazatlán in the Mexican state of Sinaloa since Dec. 16 — they were meant to be home on the 23rd.
Sunwing has promised the Lowes a flight home on the 30th but did not give them a departure time. Since their news so far in their ordeal has all come from any source other than the airline, it is difficult for the couple to feel confident in this latest assurance.
“This is our 13th day here, and we’ve actually seen a Sunwing rep (twice),” Jamie Lowe said in an interview with MooseJawToday.com. “The first day we checked in, and then yesterday … (but) there’s supposed to be a rep here every day.”
The Lowes are among at least 10 Canadian families at their hotel alone whose vacation has gone from being relaxing and stress-relieving to a nightmare that is now affecting their mental and physical health.
When a Sunwing representative finally showed up to their hotel on Dec. 28, about 30 people were in the lobby with them, all looking for answers.
Unfortunately, the Sunwing representative the company sent had been with the company only three weeks.
“All he knew to say was, ‘We’re doing the best we can’,” Lowe noted.
“We talked to three other couples today, and they’re all really nervous about whether we’ll even get home,” said Shauna Lowe. “We’ve all run out of money — we didn’t come down here planning to spend two weeks.
“We’ve run out of money, we’ve run out of medications, we’ve run out of clean clothes, we’re stressed to the gills. Like, I haven’t slept in two days. Another lady down the hall from us hasn’t slept in days, she can’t eat. It’s terrible. And we’ve had no contact from Sunwing, which is the worst part.”
No problems in the beginning
The Lowes have travelled with Sunwing before — many times, as it happens. They have gone on vacation in the second week of December for the last seven years and never had an issue.
“Every year for the last seven years, we’ve been on holiday with Sunwing,” Jamie Lowe said. “This is the first time this has happened.”
The Lowes reported that they, and the other vacationers they have spoken with, are not even specifically upset about the cascading series of delays. Instead, what has caused them the most stress has been the failure on the part of Sunwing Airlines to keep them in the loop.
“If they had just told us, ‘You know what, you’re gonna be here until the 30th’ on the very first day — the 23rd or 24th — if they had just been honest and said, ‘We can’t get a plane down to you guys until next Friday,’ then we might have been able to actually enjoy this last week a bit,” Jamie Lowe said.
That first cancelled flight home was no big deal, he added. They were told to check out at noon on the 23rd — which they did — and to wait for the bus to the airport — which they did.
The bus did not arrive, and they were told to check back in. Short, delayed text messages with the local representative were the only communication they could get.
“So, we checked back, and our room was re-booked, we just had to wait for it to be cleaned,” Jamie Lowe recounted. “We thought, OK, fine, just a one-day delay. We never heard anything else, just that (Sunwing) will get us a room for the night.”
The next day, the Lowes did that again. They checked out, waited for news about a flight, heard nothing, and checked back in.
For three days, they checked out and checked in while being “ghosted” by Sunwing. Finally, their hotel manager decided to book them into the same room until the 30th.
“She said, ‘We’re going to book you guys right to the 30th, because I’m not seeing anything going back until then,’” Lowe said. That way, the manager told them, you don’t have to keep changing rooms every day.
The Lowes said they’ve heard from other travellers that their hotels, too, have been as nice and as accommodating as possible.
Sunwing Airlines announces emergency measures
On Dec. 28, through the Travel Alerts section of the company’s website, Sunwing Airlines President Len Corrado “deeply apologiz(ed)” for the impact to their customers and announced “recovery flights” to bring Canadians home.
On Dec. 29, the same day that MooseJawToday.com interviewed the Lowes, Sunwing announced the cancellation of all flights out of Saskatchewan until Feb. 3.
As part of that statement, the airline said that:
For our Saskatoon and Regina customers who are currently in destination, our team is proactively working to repatriate all customers with cancelled return flights, and more information on rescheduled flights will be communicated shortly.
“The lack of communication is very disturbing from Sunwing,” Jamie Lowe said. “And then, to read this morning that they’re halting all operations out of Saskatchewan until February 3rd, I mean, that just threw us for a loop, like, ‘Are we stuck here until February?’”
They were relieved upon closer reading to see that it was only outgoing flights that were stopped, but the announcement served as another example of how information-deprived customers have been.
“We keep hearing that people are stranded all over, they’re doing the best they can, they’re trying to accommodate the people who ‘really have to get home,’” Shauna Lowe said. “It’s like, ‘Well, look, we all have to get home,’ you know? Not just certain people.”
[Editorial note: As of the publishing of this article, the Lowes have been delayed yet again. Their local Sunwing representative sent them a text at 2:36 a.m. informing them of a hopeful departure time of 10:40 p.m. from Mazatlán, arriving in Regina at 4 a.m. on Dec. 31.]
