Sunwing

[Old fella]

Down here in Maritimes, Sunwing just announced through email notification to customers and those booked through travel agencies of destination cancellations, most notably in NB(YQM,YFC,YSJ) to certain southern destinations. Media reported not going over well with those affected understandably, many are scrambling for other destinations/carriers at additional expense, others cancelled with full refunds. People down here love their down south sun travel and Sunwing is getting itself an awful name. A travel agent told me many are letting it be known never again on Sunwing. Same media reporting that Sunwing officials are laying the blame on non-approval to bring in 63 foreign pilots to crew their aircraft. Interesting for sure and could be that Sunwing may never recover from their shit show.

[FL030]

An airline that can't operate without temporary foreign pilots to crew their airplanes shouldn't be in business at all.

[nohojob]

For whoever is interested they are currently hiring and upgrading.

[DHC-1 Jockey]

An airline that can't operate without temporary foreign pilots to crew their airplanes shouldn't be in business at all.

For whoever is interested they are currently hiring and upgrading.

Only upgrading after the company blanked-denied all of the internal bids for upgrade to make the business case to bring in foreign workers.

The Union fought back and won. Lo and behold, those same people who were denied upgrades a few months ago are now in the upgrade class.

[safetyfirst123]

If only they had increased pay to industry standard before this month, and perhaps increased their revenue by $10 per passenger, they would have been able to hire enough Canadians to meet their commercial needs this winter. I hope they learn from this lesson, but they never seem to!

[nohojob]

An airline that can't operate without temporary foreign pilots to crew their airplanes shouldn't be in business at all.

For whoever is interested they are currently hiring and upgrading.

Only upgrading after the company blanked-denied all of the internal bids for upgrade to make the business case to bring in foreign workers.

The Union fought back and won. Lo and behold, those same people who were denied upgrades a few months ago are now in the upgrade class.

Yes, you're totally right DHC ! However it is a good thing for all those pilots to get a shot at the upgrade.

[Blueontop]

Can someone post the upgrade matrix sunwing uses?

[rando]

Somewing strikes again!

People have a 7 day attention span. Next fall these people who were cancelled will book sunwing again if the price is 5 percent less than Air Transat.

[DHC-1 Jockey]

Can someone post the upgrade matrix sunwing uses?

Screen Shot 2023-01-14 at 7.51.54 PM.png (229.77 KiB) Viewed 4302 times

Note that the first line says "should meet the following requirements" not "shall meet." And, with the reduction of 500 hours for each year on type at Sunwing (max 1,000 hour reduction), any F/O coming in with 3,000 hours or more probably meets the upgrade requirements after 2 full years at the company.

When I was hired there back in 2017, an F/O in my initial class with E75 Check A time was offered an early upgrade even though he didn't meet the 1,000 PIC on jets over 100,000 lbs, so there is precedent for offering upgrades even when not meeting the CBA stated recommended requirements. Heck, our new VP OPS was in that same initial groundschool and very quickly qualified as a Captain and I don't think he had PIC time on anything bigger than a Global Express. He mainly had Q400 time at Porter.

[Cavalier44]

Sunwing's senior management has been very vocal in the media railing against the lack of temporary foreign workers since their application to bring in foreign pilots for the winter season was rejected. Their Senior VP, Commercial Operations, just partook in the video conference with the federal government on January 12, for those who may be interested:

Meeting No. 46 TRAN - Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities.

If there is anything that can be said about this government, it's that they are extremely averse to any kind of negative publicity. If Sunwing is able to shift the blame off of themselves and onto the government for these ongoing cancellations, they may be able to pressure the government into responding favorably regarding future TFW requests. I have little doubt that these further cancellations play into Sunwing's strategy to ratchet up pressure on the federal government in order to allow their temporary foreign pilot program to be approved going forward.

I think Unifor and ALPA need to get together to coordinate a strong response and get ahead of the message here before they're put in a position where they're unable to effectively respond to Sunwing's publicity campaign.

[bobcatdriver]

ALPA would be first to sell out Sunwing pilots

[Cavalier44]

ALPA would be first to sell out Sunwing pilots

Care to elaborate on that thought?

If you look at the public statements that ALPA has made regarding the suspension of Sunwing's TFW program for this winter, along with the fact that there's a significant chance that Sunwing pilots will end up represented by ALPA in the near future if the WestJet acquisition goes ahead, I don't think ALPA has any intention of "selling out" Sunwing pilots, whatever that means.

[co-joe]

ALPA would be first to sell out Sunwing pilots

Care to elaborate on that thought?

If you look at the public statements that ALPA has made regarding the suspension of Sunwing's TFW program for this winter, along with the fact that there's a significant chance that Sunwing pilots will end up represented by ALPA in the near future if the WestJet acquisition goes ahead, I don't think ALPA has any intention of "selling out" Sunwing pilots, whatever that means.

In the ALPA fast read they all but take responsibility for Sunwing cancelling the tfw program, and point out they were against it from day 1. If you want to look at a completely useless pilot union, Unifor tops the list...

[BigQ]

Full Disclosure: I am a WG employee

If there is anything that can be said about this government, it's that they are extremely averse to any kind of negative publicity. If Sunwing is able to shift the blame off of themselves and onto the government for these ongoing cancellations, they may be able to pressure the government into responding favorably regarding future TFW requests. I have little doubt that these further cancellations play into Sunwing's strategy to ratchet up pressure on the federal government in order to allow their temporary foreign pilot program to be approved going forward.

I think Unifor and ALPA need to get together to coordinate a strong response and get ahead of the message here before they're put in a position where they're unable to effectively respond to Sunwing's publicity campaign.

While I agree the sentiment that WG royally screwed up their training needs in the past year, I believe some of the blame should be placed on TC/HRSDC. Whatever the reason for the denial of the TFW application, be it lack of reciprocity with EU companies, the Miroslav Gronych incident, etc, why in the bloody hell did a management team and a legal team all have the impression for months that their application had a good chance of being approved? I believe it is more probable that a federal bureaucracy led the company on into a false sense of security, than a minimum of 10 executives and lawyers - all intelligent and experienced - get suckered into the biggest black eye the travel industry has seen in decades.

Knowing that our Federal Government, having had a taste of totalitarianism in the past 3 years, is probably salivating at the idea of creating a crisis to increase it's power, I believe that blaming Sunwing 100% for the debacle is incorrect. Considering the transaction with ONEX is supposed to be finalized in less than 3 months, "Something's funky".

[safetyfirst123]

The last time Sunwing brought in TFW's was in 2016. It is disingenuous of Sunwing to suggest that they get them all the time, and that it came as a surprise to them when TFW's were denied. My understanding was that after the Miroslav incident, the government effectively said no more TFW pilots.

Gross mismanagement by the company is the real cause of this debacle. Flight Ops Management should have raised alarm bells with the executive leadership well in advance with a backup plan. It seems to me that this never happened until it was too late.

The Sunwing Group will be far better off when it decides to take the airline division seriously, rather than as an afterthought run on a shoestring budget.

[TFTMB heavy]

What I heard is that for the TFW application to be successful one of the requirements is the union signing off on it. I was told that the Sunwing MEC did not support the application therefore it was denied. Take it for what it's worth, I have to evidence to support any of this. If it is true, kudos to the MEC.

[safetyfirst123]

What I heard is that for the TFW application to be successful one of the requirements is the union signing off on it. I was told that the Sunwing MEC did not support the application therefore it was denied. Take it for what it's worth, I have to evidence to support any of this. If it is true, kudos to the MEC.

The MEC ran a very public campaign against the TFW's, including plenty of tweets, billboards in Toronto at Yonge and Dundas Square, among other efforts. Even so, it was not clear until the decision was made which direction this would go. Why the company waited until such a late date without a reasonable backup plan is beyond comprehension. Why the company points the finger at the union for this failure raises many questions as well.

[BigQ]

I agree, but a group of C-suites and lawyers don't just have in their minds that "something Is", when "it is not", unless somehow, somewhere, they had an indication of the contrary. One does not lead a billion dollar + company without formulating a successful plan B or C - that's a rookie mistake.

Somehow they were made to think that plan A was going to work, and then the company put all their eggs in one basket. So if that is the case, how they hell did they think it was going to work? I find it too simplistic, too easy of a scapegoat. It wasn't the union, since the MEC was loud in its objections.

I guess time will tell. I would think that if it was an internal SNAFU, we would've received the "internal reshuffling memos" or "retirement announcements" already, interspersed among the network base reduction announcements. But they haven't arrived yet.

[safetyfirst123]

I agree, but a group of C-suites and lawyers don't just have in their minds that "something Is", when "it is not", unless somehow, somewhere, they had an indication of the contrary. One does not lead a billion dollar + company without formulating a successful plan B or C - that's a rookie mistake.

Somehow they were made to think that plan A was going to work, and then the company put all their eggs in one basket. So if that is the case, how they hell did they think it was going to work? I find it too simplistic, too easy of a scapegoat. It wasn't the union, since the MEC was loud in its objections.

I guess time will tell. I would think that if it was an internal SNAFU, we would've received the "internal reshuffling memos" or "retirement announcements" already, interspersed among the network base reduction announcements. But they haven't arrived yet.

With an imminent announcement regarding the deal with Westjet, it's not the time to restructure. Give it a few more weeks or months and let's see what happens. Hopefully the Westjet deal brings stability to Flight Operations at Sunwing. The business is definitely there, they just need to be better at taking people from A to B.

[co-joe]

I've been pretty against WG and their TFW plan for a long time, but this was the worst possible year to get denied by the feds. The pandemic his WG harder than any other carrier in terms of the percentage of their business that it effected (100%), you could argue that TS felt as much impact but they were able to pivot slightly and do some local flying just to keep the doors open. For WG to go from a standstill a year ago, to last year omicron in jan/feb, to this year full tilt pent up demand rebound, and then get denied last minute...rough. The Libs either want them to be able to pay back the loans or not, this is feeling like they dont even want the money back.

Is Onex on the hook for the 375 Million LEEF then? (Or whatever amount they accessed...)

[safetyfirst123]

I've been pretty against WG and their TFW plan for a long time, but this was the worst possible year to get denied by the feds. The pandemic his WG harder than any other carrier in terms of the percentage of their business that it effected (100%), you could argue that TS felt as much impact but they were able to pivot slightly and do some local flying just to keep the doors open. For WG to go from a standstill a year ago, to last year omicron in jan/feb, to this year full tilt pent up demand rebound, and then get denied last minute...rough. The Libs either want them to be able to pay back the loans or not, this is feeling like they dont even want the money back.

Is Onex on the hook for the 375 Million LEEF then? (Or whatever amount they accessed...)

I'll repeat, the last time they got TFW pilots was in 2016. The government said back then that they would no longer allow TFW pilots. Sunwing was too busy creating fake Direct Entry Captain job ads, bypassing 75% of internal captain applicants for mostly fake reasons, while they should have been trying to retain their pilots and attracting new pilots instead. In the mean time, the pilots they hired were mostly very low experience, a large number of which have barely started their line indoc quite a few months after being hired.

It wasn't an impossible task to crew the airline, but management made it impossible with their poor decisions.

[TFTMB heavy]

I've been pretty against WG and their TFW plan for a long time, but this was the worst possible year to get denied by the feds. The pandemic his WG harder than any other carrier in terms of the percentage of their business that it effected (100%), you could argue that TS felt as much impact but they were able to pivot slightly and do some local flying just to keep the doors open. For WG to go from a standstill a year ago, to last year omicron in jan/feb, to this year full tilt pent up demand rebound, and then get denied last minute...rough. The Libs either want them to be able to pay back the loans or not, this is feeling like they dont even want the money back.

Is Onex on the hook for the 375 Million LEEF then? (Or whatever amount they accessed...)

TS had two complete shutdowns during the pandemic. The restart was a nightmare with everyone needing training and sectors being limited for line training.