Good evening from Vancouver, British Columbia!
My name is Alex, and I’m about to fly on an airline that I’ve been meaning to try for ages.
In the process of making aviation-related videos over the past far too many years,
I’ve attempted to try out as many Canadian airlines as I can,
but there’s always been one glaring omission - Sunwing!
Sunwing Airlines is a Canadian low-cost leisure carrier and
tour operator that flies over a dozen 737-800s and MAX 8s,
mainly focusing on point to point flights from various Canadian cities to sun destinations.
Because of that, they don’t really do many domestic flights,
and in the context of trying new airlines for the purpose of making these sorts of videos,
buying a vacation package and going somewhere like Cancun isn’t terribly cost effective.
But, that being said, they still have some domestic flights that
you can book on limited routes, and one of those is Vancouver to Toronto.
So, to finally see what Sunwing was like, I grabbed myself an Elite Plus seat,
which has extra legroom for obvious reasons, and headed to Vancouver for this flight.
It was a beautiful clear evening here at YVR,
and given the lack of traffic at this time of night, I had a chance to look
through this impressive model collection that they have between the B and C gates.
Our departure gate is C50, which unfortunately didn’t have the best view.
Nevertheless, our plane for today is this 5-year-old Boeing 737-800,
registered as Charlie Golf Lima Romeo November. This plane was delivered new to Sunwing in 2016
and has flown for them ever since, except for a season or two operating for TUI in Europe.
Ironically, this plane actually came in from Calgary where I live,
but because it was operating a flight from Cabo, you can’t book the Calgary to Vancouver leg alone.
So, you might see a lot of these domestic Sunwing flights taking place,
but they’re generally tag-ons to their international ones. Hence,
you do kind of have to go out of your way to fly Sunwing only within Canada.
Even though this flight is unfortunately a redeye,
I was still really looking forward to crossing Sunwing off the list.
Let’s go see what they’re like!
My seat over to Toronto is 5F, the last row of these Elite Plus seats at the front.
These ones on the front right side of the aircraft have “up to 35 inches of pitch”,
which is more than enough space for me! I’ve also got this very nice engine view too.
Since this is mostly a night flight,
I’ll take a look around the seat now just while we’ve got some light in the cabin.
Right in front is this tray table that rests decently high up and slides out a bit.
In the seatback pocket, which is reasonably sized, Sunwing had their
safety card for both the 737-800 and MAX 8, and this Sunwing-branded air sickness bag.
As far as seatback pocket contents go, that might seem a bit sparse,
but Sunwing did say while I was checking in that some other things like
menus and “destination getaways” could be found on the app, and I’ll take a look at those in the air.
These seats are pretty new and all look really really nice. They also have some channel and
volume controls on the armrests that clearly don’t do anything. However, they do have these screens
that drop down from above the seats, but they didn’t make an appearance on this flight at all.
With the added bonus of the Boeing Sky Interior, the cabin looks very sleek and feels pretty clean.
Clean that is, except for somebody’s questionable gum placement between my seat and the wall.
In fairness though, it’s not like that’s an easy thing to spot on a quick turnaround.
Now interestingly, as boarding finished up,
only myself and a single other person booked these Elite Plus seats up front
and that left me with the ultimate gift for any red-eye flight - poor-man’s business class!
Unfortunately that was quickly snatched away as they had a weight and balance issue and ended
up moving a bunch of people forward, who, well, didn’t pay the extra $50 I did for the legroom. I
still had a free middle seat though so it could’ve been worse!
Eventually, we were pushing back and on our way,
and here’s our departure from YVR, off of runway 26R.
I fell asleep pretty quickly after takeoff, and a crew member woke me up about an hour
later with this breakfast sandwich I bought when I booked the flight. They also went
through the cabin giving out complimentary drinks, and selling buy-on-board too.
As far as sandwiches go, this was pretty tasty,
and surprisingly enough, was actually warmed up. It cost me 7 dollars extra
on Sunwing’s website beforehand, but I’d say it was worth it as a… very early breakfast!
After that, I slept on-and-off as I usually do on these red-eye flights,
until I saw the sky start to brighten up.
On Sunwing’s app, they have a digital menu that you can flip through,
as well as some excursion and duty free brochures. The rest of the app essentially
redirects you to their website for flight related things, except that there isn’t wifi on board.
If I had to make a suggestion, since the app relies mostly on an internet connection,
I think the offline material is better found under its own tab right at the bottom of the screen.
Of course, I’m no app developer, and I’m not sure if this was my sleep-deprived brain failing to put
two and two together or not, but I just could not find that menu,
until I dug through the app a bit more.
About an hour before landing, there was a second service,
and I went for a cup of coffee, which, for whatever reason was… undrinkable.
Not sure exactly what happened to that pot of coffee but it tasted like… soap.
Still, we had some beautiful views over the western Great Lakes as the sun rose.
Sunwing’s 737-800s seat 189 passengers in an all-economy configuration.
Their Elite Plus seats are essentially all of the seats with extra legroom,
which includes those in the front and the two overwing exit rows.
For comparison’s sake, their standard seats are a fair bit tighter,
at 29 inches of pitch. Considering that Elite Plus also included priority boarding and a
dedicated line at check-in in addition to the extra space, it was absolutely worth it for me.
The lavatories in the very back are the typical slimmer ones,
but they have just enough space and lots of light.
Heading eastbound, the Vancouver to Toronto redeye is just over 4 hours long, which gave
me just a bit more time to sleep, unlike the shorter Calgary-Toronto ones I’m used to. But,
eventually, we were on the descent into Toronto, and here’s our arrival onto YYZ’s runway 23.
So that was Sunwing!
Overall, I thought this was a pretty decent flight. We left on time,
arrived early, and the extra legroom in Elite Plus was very welcome.
I did like that you could buy some food beforehand and have it delivered right to your seat,
and I did like that the crew woke me up so I didn’t miss the service.
There obviously wasn’t any in-flight entertainment on board aside from sleeping,
and food did have to be paid for. On a proper international flight though,
it’s possible that the onboard experience could be a little bit different.
Ultimately though, for an airline that positions themselves as a low-cost leisure carrier,
it was pretty much exactly what you’d expect.
All in all, it was just that, a fairly unremarkable but still enjoyable flight,
and it’s a good thing I did this while Sunwing is still an independent company.
Back in March, they announced that they’d be merging with WestJet, and pending all
the usual approvals, that should theoretically close around the end of this year. They say the
Sunwing brand will stick around going forward, but who knows how that’s really gonna look.
So, no matter what ends up happening merger-wise, I’m very glad I had the chance to try out Sunwing.
Thank you so much for watching another long-overdue trip report,
and I’ll see you next time.