MONTREAL - The captain of a Sunwing Airlines flight missed his curfew into Pierre-Elliot-Trudeau Airport on Sunday night, stranding hundreds of his passengers at Ottawa's airport without food, water or even blanket.
"The whole behaviour, given the circumstances, was insulting," said Alexei Fimine, who travelled with his three children, including an 18-month old.
With commercial airliners barred from landing in Dorval between 1:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m., the passengers returning from Cuba were first told that buses would shuttle them to Montreal. The buses never came.
"They shouldn't have taken off at all, because they knew they were going to be late and were hoping that they would make it," said Fimine.
While airliners can be allowed to land during medical emergencies, adverse weather or delays beyond the airlines control, Sunwing told CTV News that it had been granted permission to land past 1:00 a.m. in the past.
"It was just a rough return," said Nelson Conceicao. "One Sunwing representative told us that the bus wouldn't come and we would need to stay at the airport. That's it. We had no vouchers or anything else."
According to Sunwing, all buses and hotels in Ottawa were booked for the NHL All-Star game. Made to fend for themselves, some passengers paid for $350 taxi rides to Montreal.
"I saw couples with kids crying, they hadn't packed the extra diapers or food for the evening, they didn't know they would be staying there," said Conceicao. "That made me more upset than anything else."
Sunwing says that compensation is unlikely.
"They won't be reimbursed because we arranged transportation for them and I guess they decided not to accept them," said Daryl McWilliams, Sunwing's vice-president sales and marketing.
If they aren't reimbursed, some passengers are threatening to file a lawsuit against the Toronto-based company.
