Wednesday, July 3, 2019 | 3:25 p.m.
Sun Country Airlines is apologizing to customers for canceling six flights this past weekend without notifying passengers, the latest blunder for Minnesota’s hometown carrier.
The company said a series of unrelated problems at airports in Newark, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., prompted the cancellations. But what really upset its customers was the lack of communication before and during the disruptions.
Eagan-based Sun Country last week completed an overhaul of the computer system that manages its operations. Unfortunately, the airline said, “a step that triggers customer communication was missed,” in the case of a cancellation.
These weekend flights, which were three round-trips to and from Minneapolis-St. Paul, were the first to be canceled since the overhaul, and was the first real-time test for the customer communication system that should’ve been automatic.
Passengers were given the option to either rebook on the next available flight or receive a refund. Sun Country will also reimburse hotel costs incurred from the cancellation and is also giving each passenger a $200 voucher toward future travel in the hopes that “they will give us another chance to provide an exceptional flight experience in the future,” the airline said in a statement.
“We sincerely apologize to all the passengers on the six flights canceled on Saturday, June 29,” Sun Country said. “This is not the customer experience we strive to offer or that our guests should expect.”
The cancellations were unexpected. One aircraft was suddenly out of service due to a maintenance issue, another flight was delayed due to a temporary runway shutdown at Newark, and the third flight cancellation was triggered when the flight crew “timed out” from the delays, meaning they were past the legal limit of hours worked in a day.
Sun Country has had a series of fits and starts as it lurches toward a new, revamped business model. The company’s new leaders, who arrived in 2017, and its new private-equity owner, who bought the airline in early 2018, have been trying to modernize the fleet, the route structure and the finances with an eye toward sustainable, long-term growth. But the process has been fast-moving and rocky, especially from a customer service standpoint, from lost or extremely-delayed baggage to more egregious missteps like stranding passengers at their destination.
The airline aims to expand beyond the Minneapolis-St. Paul market, where it is disproportionately dependent. This growth has spread its small fleet thin and without backup airplanes or multiple flights per day, there’s little room for error. Cancellations or delays can quickly ripple through its network, leading to even more frustrated passengers clogging up the customer service phone lines.
Paradoxically, the new computer system is meant to bridge some of these communication gaps. It’s not unusual for company’s systemwide IT transitions to experience unexpected glitches that cause short-term headaches for hopefully long-term improvement.
Sun Country is asking customers to be patient. “We are hopeful they will give us another chance to provide an exceptional flight experience in the future,” the airline said.
