As hundreds of Canadians scramble to get home after their Sunwing flights from Mexico were cancelled last week, a passengers’ rights advocate says stranded travellers should consider legal action if they aren’t compensated by the airline.
Gabor Lukacs, president and founder of the Air Passenger Rights group, says passengers grappling with cancelled flights and inadequate information about when they might be rebooked should buy their own tickets home with a different carrier, and keep careful records and receipts of their expenses.
If Sunwing refuses to compensate them under the federal Air Passenger Protection Regulations, they should take the matter to small claims court, Lukacs said in an interview.
“We’re at a point in Canada where suing an airline is not simply about your own money, it’s about changing how they operate. It’s about behaviour modification,” he said. “And that’s where the government is derelict in its duties to the public.”
He said passengers should also phone their local member of Parliament and ask for better enforcement of passenger rights in Canada.
As of Sunday, hundreds of Canadian travellers were stuck in Cancun, Mexico after Sunwing cancelled their flights home. Some described being shuffled from hotel to hotel, sometimes arriving to find there were no rooms booked for them, while Sunwing officials offered inaccurate and incomplete information about when they might get home.
Sheldon de Souza said in an interview Monday that a similar situation is playing out in Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s west coast. He said he flew there with his wife, three kids and three family friends on Dec. 14, with a flight home scheduled with Sunwing on Dec. 21.
That flight was cancelled, though only some passengers were told, he said. Several days of incomplete information and confusion from Sunwing followed, he said.
He and a group of fellow passengers were moved to different hotels and asked to check out each day and report back to the lobby every hour, in case there was news of a flight.
Sunwing officials at the hotel would say there was a flight coming up then, hours later, would say it had been cancelled, de Souza said. He said in the meantime, the flights wouldn’t show up on the airport’s daily schedules, leading de Souza to believe he was being misled.
He said he booked himself a spot on an Air Canada flight back to Calgary on Dec. 23, which cost him about $1,000. His wife, his children and their friends managed to get a Sunwing flight home on Boxing Day, but only because they started showing up at the airport to push for a spot, he said.
He said they had snagged seats on a Sunwing flight to Edmonton late on Christmas Day, even making it to the gate with boarding passes. But then officials said the crew were beyond their allowed maximum working hours and the plane was cancelled.
“It felt like Sunwing just abandoned us, they didn’t care,” de Souza said. “It’s not even that they made an effort, they forgot us.”
He said there were “several hundred” Canadians stranded in Puerto Vallarta when he left, and some are likely still there.
The federal Air Passenger Protection Regulations mandates airlines to pay up to $1,000 in compensation for cancellations or significant delays that stem from reasons within the carrier’s control when the notification comes 14 days or less before departure.
Lukacs said it’s unlikely Sunwing will voluntarily pay up. The Canadian Transportation Agency, which acts as the federal airline regulator, doesn’t do enough to hold airlines accountable, he said, so they don’t feel much pressure to obey the rules.
Federal legislation grants the agency’s enforcement officers the power to investigate companies and individuals it believes have broken the rules and to issue fines of up to $25,000.
The regulator’s website shows that in the past five years, just one carrier — WestJet, for 55 instances in late January — has been fined for not providing adequate compensation to passengers. The total penalty was $11,000.
Lukacs said the agency isn’t issuing enough fines. “The government is turning a blind eye to airlines’ misconduct,” he said.
Neither Sunwing nor the Canadian Transportation Agency responded immediately to a request for comment.
Sunwing said in an email Sunday that it cancelled the flights because of bad weather and that it was trying to get people home “in the coming days.”
“Our teams are working hard to re-accommodate customers by subservicing aircraft where possible, in addition to arranging alternate hotels and transfers for those with overnight delays,” the email said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 26, 2022.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
