Flair customers who were supposed to fly home from Mexico on Thursday are speaking out after their flight was delayed for three days.

Stephanie Conners of Ottawa said the ordeal was marked by sleep deprivation, food rationing and a lack of communication from Flair. She had visited Isla Holbox for 10 days of solo backpacking, and learned her flight would be delayed while travelling back to Cancun airport March 14.

That night's flight never took off. The delays kept escalating for days and left her frantically shuttling to and from an airport hotel, boarding and then de-planing an aircraft that passengers were told had a faulty navigation system, and subsisting for three days on food and from an airport terminal where water bottles cost close to $10.

"The way that they treat people is absolutely criminal," Conners said. "I would never fly with them again."

Air passenger rights advocate Gábor Lukács has weighed in on the situation, saying the federal government is partly to blame for not enforcing its own airline rules when it comes to delays and cancellations.

"The behaviour and such a blatant disregard of the law is troubling," he said, adding that the government is "tolerating such a systemic, flagrant disregard of passenger rights."

Daily Hive has reached out to Flair for comment, but has not yet heard back.

Conners explained the airline put passengers up in an airport hotel the first night, shuttling them there and giving them dinner. They returned to the airport for the rescheduled flight on Friday and received boarding passes, but were cautioned to watch terminal screens for more changes.

They finally boarded buses to be taken out to the tarmac after more delay notifications. Conners estimated they waited an hour and a half on the buses before the pilot boarded and told them via the intercom that the plane's navigation system wasn’t working.

Conners and the other passengers were taken back to the terminal to wait more.

She was checking alternative flights online, but everything costed close to $1,000. Flair's email notifying her the original flight was cancelled also offered an option for a refund, but she couldn't tell how much it would be.

After several more hours of waiting at the airport, the group received word the plane was fixed. By now it was past 7:45 p.m., and passengers boarded the plane. It didn't take off.

Conners said they were stuck on the tarmac for several hours before being being told to get off.

This time, passengers collected their bags before being taken back to the airport hotel for a second night.

Conners got back to the hotel after midnight, and followed instructions to be in the lobby for shuttle pickup at 8 a.m. But when she went downstairs, she was told the shuttle had already left.

It was chaotic, but Conners ended up getting back to the airport. She received a boarding pass at 9:50 a.m. Saturday saying her flight's boarding time was at 9:55 a.m. — and the entire group had trouble making it through security because the timing was so tight.

"They're holding us in this kind of pen, and this pen is getting bigger as security is figuring out if they're going to let us go through. But eventually they figure out there's a whole plane of people turning up."

Around 1:30 p.m., Conners and the others got back on buses to go to the plane.

"As each of us puts through our boarding pass, they tell us it's a different plane," she said. "So we're like, thank God. It's bound to be out of issues.”

But once Conners got to her seat, the same one she'd been assigned the previous day, she recognized the same nail polish stains on the tray table. Someone told her a wrapper they left there the previous day while waiting on the tarmac was still there.

Conners was sitting on the tarmac once again. After about an hour, she said the pilot said the navigation system was still a problem.

"People are starting to panic pretty hard," Conners said."“I counted up the stamps in my passport, 38, and I;ve never been through something like this."

Eventually, staff came back over the intercom to say only part of the navigation system wasn't working. They were going to get special permission to fly without the usual fully functional system.

They ended up taking off around 5 p.m. on March 16, Conners said.

"It was just being overwhelmed, overtired, sleep-deprived, rationing food and water … children were put in really bad situations," she said.

She's going to try and seek compensation from Flair for the delay as well as the expenses she incurred in the airport and her missed shifts at work.

"This cannot be allowed," she said.

Lukács said Flair owed passengers re-booking on a competitor's flight in that scenario — a responsibility the airline has a track record of shirking. He recommended passengers keep track of their meal and accommodation expenses to seek compensation through small claims court.

He's also concerned about Flair’s financial viability, saying that if the airline goes bankrupt passengers may not get what they're owed. Lynx, another Canadian low-cost airline, recently shut down leaving ticket-holders without compensation for flights they'd booked.