The Canadian airline industry is showing its collegial spirit in the wake of a cyber-attack on a Sunwing service provider that left the operator’s networks down for days.
Sunwing’s networks went down on Sunday, and remain down going into the fifth day.
Thousands of its customers have been affected, many in sun destinations unable to get home. In Canada, pax have seen flights delayed by days as the airline attempts to work around the problem.
Sunwing has had to revert to manually checking in their customers, but that’s not quick enough to clear the backlog of flights and passengers.
Enter the competition. But with helping hands.
Sunwing tweeted out thanks on Wednesday afternoon to other Canadian airlines who it says have been able to provide assistance.
Thank you WestJet, Air Transat and Nolinor Aviation for your help in getting our passengers to their destinations!
— Sunwing Vacations (@SunwingVacay) April 20, 2022
“Thank you WestJet, Air Transat and Nolinor Aviation for your help in getting our passengers to their destinations!” the tweet read.
The operator says it’s working as quickly as possible to get pax and flights on their way.
However, until its third-party service provider’s systems are verified to be fully operational and secure once more, Sunwing can’t provide a timeline for an end to the disruption of all its flights coming to and departing from Canada.
Sunwing CEO Mark Williams said earlier in the week that financial compensation would be forthcoming for affected pax. He also said the operator has been providing hotel and transfer support where appropriate and that customers would be able to rebook vacations until JUN.
A statement issued by Sunwing earlier in the week says, “while we continue to process flights manually, additional flight delays can be expected and customers are advised to sign up for flight alerts on Sunwing.ca.”
