The Infamous Sunwing Party Flight's Organizer & Some Passengers Responded On Social Media

From TMZ To Trudeau, everyone seems to be talking about the infamous Sunwing party flight to Cancun that turned a group of Quebec influencers into the subjects of a Transport Canada investigation, as passengers face fines of up to $5,000 and a precarious journey home (Sunwing cancelled their return flight and two other airlines are refusing to take them).

Now, the flight's organizer, as well as some of the passengers, are speaking out about the incident on social media.

'I will take a moment'

The plane was reportedly privately charted by 111 Private Club, a self-described "exclusive" invitation-only group, for a new year's event it had organized in Mexico.

James William Awad, who operates 111 Private Club, initially tweeted on Tuesday night that "The 111 private club respected all instructions given by Sunwing."

"Alcohol was sold to my group throughout the whole flight," he continued. "My group is A1."

However, the next day, he began to change his tune. On January 5 at 1:04 p.m., he tweeted, "I take this matter very seriously. A simple party on a plane did all this buzz. I will take a moment to sit down and re think everything. Especially how I can do things better next time. Give me a moment to understand the situation better."

Awad also responded to a CTV News article, which stated that "Sunwing had offered to fly the group home on their intended return flight on Jan. 5, but the group wouldn't accept the airline's terms and conditions."

"I wanted to make sure the group can eat during a 5 hours flight. If not, I still agreed to all the conditions," he wrote.

Air Transat and Air Canada are also refusing to bring passengers from this flight back to Canada.

'We were sleeping'

Meanwhile, on January 4, three reality TV personalities from the TV show L’île de l’amour posted an Instagram story to tell their sides of the story.

"As you know, we are in Mexico right now and you saw in the papers this morning what happened in our flight and we just wanted to talk, as we do not want to pretend it never happened and everything, but at the same time we are also bashed for things we did not do [...] We were sleeping," said Isabelle Labrecque, seated beside Anna-Maëlle Laprise and Sandrine Seguin.

"There were 180 people on the flight. It was an organized flight. We didn't have many details about what was going to happen and it wasn't the 180 people who had the party on the flight, it was a minority."

@diaryofisabelle | Instagram

She continued by saying that the incident has been sensationalized in the media but was also "unacceptable."

"The stuff was exaggerated, but we're not minimizing what happened on the flight [...] We don't identify with what happened on that flight, but don't include everyone in that," she said.

Labrecque goes on to say that she and her friends did not purchase alcohol, are vaccinated, and even took additional tests at the hotel to be able to do all the activities. She ends by apologizing if the situation hurt anyone's feelings.

"Yes it wasn't right what happened, but I don't think it's necessary to send hate messages, to maybe try to get Isa in trouble with her pilot job," added Laprise, referencing the fact that Labrecque works as a pilot. "We heard, we understood and we are also in the same vibe as you."