Passenger details 'nightmare' experience after canceled Sun Country flight

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (FOX 9) - Passengers on a Sun Country flight are irate after they felt like they were stranded in Cancun, Mexico for the night.

This comes on the heels of a travel debacle last year when Sun Country told hundreds of passengers they would have to find their own way home when winter weather forced cancellations.

“It was 24 hours of a nightmare,” said Jess Kubis, an impacted traveler.

Kubis says staying an extra night in Cancun was certainly not an extended vacation. She and hundreds of other passengers were left alone in a room inside the Cancun airport for hours without any information about when they would return to Minnesota.

“We were kind of held hostage at the airport,” she said. “We couldn’t leave the area to go get food because we were afraid we’d miss something or [they'd] make us leave.”

Kubis says a mechanical issue with a door handle started the delays with the flight Saturday, but no one with the crew or airline would communicate with passengers on how long the issue would take to fix or if they would get put on a different plane.

“We had to de-plane and they wouldn’t allow us to talk to any gate agents to book our flights,” said Kubis. “They took us to an area downstairs where there were no food or beverage options and no area to charge your phones.”

After nearly five hours, the flight was canceled and passengers were told they might fly out the next day. They were then all loaded onto shuttles.

“We all got on these buses and we didn’t know where we were going,” said Kubis. “We were driving down the freeway and we have no idea where we are going, what hotel; we don’t even know what city we’re going to be in.”

Sun Country did pay for their overnight hotel stay and gave everyone a travel voucher worth $200. They also plan on reimbursing passengers for any food costs.

In a statement to FOX 9 a spokeswoman for Sun Country Airlines said in part, "The required part was flown in and the repair was made to the aircraft this morning. While we never want to delay a flight, the safety of our passengers and our crew is always our number one priority."

The travelers finally arrived in Minnesota just before 5 p.m. Sunday. Kubis says she won't be using that $200 voucher.

“I will never fly Sun Country again. I will go with Delta or a much more customer-friendly approach,” she said.