Angry Swoop air travellers diverted from Hamilton by bad weather say they were abandoned for hours at a Montreal airport and only offered a "first-come, first-serve" bus trip back home in icy conditions.

Hamilton-bound flights from Halifax and Tampa Bay were diverted away from the John C. Munro international airport because of high winds in the early hours of Dec. 30, passengers told The Spectator.

The safety reroute did not bother Kyler Jones — but the Burlington resident was shocked to find himself "ditched" at 2:30 a.m. in a largely empty Montreal airport for hours.

"We had no idea what was going on," said Jones, who was heading home from Halifax after a holiday trip to see family. "They (aircraft staff) gave us a call centre number for Swoop and basically left us to our own devices.

"The call centre only opened at 8 a.m. How can you do that to people?"

The Spectator has reached out to Swoop for information about the diverted flights, which prompted a slew of angry complaints on Twitter.

Jones said the first contact he had from the low-cost airline after arriving in Montreal came via an email around 5:30 a.m. — three hours after landing — suggesting unspecified alternate transportation was being arranged.

A followup email an hour later said two buses available after 9 a.m. would take passengers back to the Hamilton airport — a seven-hour trip on increasingly icy roads — on a "first-come, first-serve" basis.

With no guarantee of bus room for all passengers, Jones paid $60 for a taxi into downtown Montreal and managed to hop an early VIA train to Toronto. From there, he took a GO train back to Burlington.

All told, he figures he spent about 18 hours in planes, trains and automobiles Monday in his circuitous Halifax-to-Hamilton odyssey.

Elena Tonti emailed The Spectator to say her flight from Florida was also diverted to Montreal and she and her young children, aged one and two years, were "dumped" in Montreal around 4 a.m.

After learning about the no-guarantee bus option, Tonti said she ended up renting a car and "making an epic journey" home through snow and icy conditions.

She called Swoop's customer care efforts "outrageously inept."

The Spectator viewed an email from Swoop that thanked stranded passengers for their patience Monday and specified that if there was no room on the provided buses, other travellers would be reimbursed for the cost of making their own way back to Hamilton.

It's not clear if airfare refunds are being offered.

Jones wryly noted his only other attempt to use Swoop out of Hamilton resulted in an abrupt flight cancellation that left him briefly stranded in Edmonton earlier this year.

"I'm done with them. Never again," he said. "Both times, it has been a complete disaster."

He is contemplating demanding a refund from Swoop and filing a complaint to the Canadian Transportation Agency over a lack of appropriate accommodation.

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"I'm not happy about it, for sure, and I want to complain. But right now I'm running on about two hours of sleep, so I think that is going to have to wait until the new year."

mvandongen@thespec.com

905-526-3241 | @Mattatthespec