Bride scrambles to fly guests to Las Vegas after Swoop cancels flights

A woman in Brantford Ont. is scrambling to get flights for her guests rebooked for her wedding in Las Vegas, after Swoop Inc. cancelled flights for her and 14 others planning to attend the wedding.

“On Monday, four weeks before my wedding, they cancelled every single flight. For myself, my soon to be husband and all my family and friends,” Tami Taylor said.

Taylor, her fiancé, and 13 guests all booked flights through Swoop from Hamilton to Vegas for her wedding in August.

“Swoop recently processed a schedule change impacting flights between July 27 to August 31, making measured adjustments to our schedule to proactively mitigate last-minute disruptions during the peak travel season,” Julia Brunet, a communications advisor for Swoop Inc. said in an email.

Taylor said some guests received refunds, but the cost for flights has multiplied and now they can’t afford a new ticket. Others rebooked to times that won’t work. Some guests also purchased non-refundable tickets for shows in Vegas they won’t be able to see.

“As of yesterday there were no direct flights left for any of my guests. So they’re on layovers that instead of coming home on the Sunday, they can’t come home until the Monday,” Taylor said.

Taylor and her fiancé have been rebooked to fly out of Toronto instead of Hamilton. So far, four guests say they won’t be able to go.

“We are getting married on our 25th anniversary in Vegas, probably alone. So it was pretty bad,” Taylor said.

Tami Taylor shows the email she received from Swoop Inc. (CTV News/Colton Wiens)

Since Monday, Taylor said she’s been trying to contact both WestJet and Swoop, in order to get the rest of her guests organized.

“The first response took eight hours. It just said ‘wait until we transfer you to an agent,’ so you didn’t even know if the chat was live or not. So for the whole day I was going crazy going, ‘what am I doing? Who do I call?’” Taylor said.

According to an air passenger rights advocate, because Taylor is booked on an international flight, Swoop is responsible to find an appropriate flight for the guests, even if it requires purchasing tickets through another airline. He suggests Taylor contact the airline and keep copies of any conversations.

“I would give them maybe, at most a week, tell them 'if you don't rebook us by a date, we are going to buy a new ticket and will be suing you for the expenses.' Then just follow through with it,” Gábor Lukács, president of the group Air Passenger Rights said.

“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. It is never our intention to disrupt our travellers’ plans and we understand how impactful these changes can be,” Brunet said in the email.