Elbé Wadley, a U.S. citizen, says he was pulled off a Sunrise Airways flight by police after complaining about service, beaten, and left stranded in Cap-Haïtien. The airline says his conduct was disruptive and has banned him.
By Emmanuel Paul — Caribbean Television Network (CTN)
A U.S. citizen of Haitian descent says he was forced off a Sunrise Airways flight by police, detained, and left stranded in Cap-Haïtien after he complained about the airline’s service, an account the airline disputes, saying in a formal notice that his conduct was disruptive and that it has banned him from flying with the carrier and reported him to U.S. aviation authorities.
The passenger, identified as Elbé Wadley, had been in Haiti for more than 8 months and was trying to return to his family in the United States. What was meant to be the last leg of that reunion instead left him stuck in Haiti’s second city with no money and no way home.
According to Wadley’s account, given in several videos circulating on social media, he had purchased a ticket from Cap-Haïtien to Miami, where he was booked on a connecting flight to New York. When he arrived at the airport, he says, he was told the flight’s destination had been changed: instead of Miami, the plane would land in Fort Lauderdale.
That detail is consistent with the airline’s own operations. Sunrise Airways flies from Cap-Haïtien to both Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and a formal notice the airline later issued confirms that the flight in question — Flight S6616 on August 6 — was bound for Fort Lauderdale, not Miami. The change threatened his onward connection, but Wadley says he agreed to board anyway.
The trouble began minutes after boarding, by his account.
A crew member, he says, informed passengers there was not enough water on the aircraft for everyone. Frustrated that the airline could not meet what he considered a basic standard of service, Wadley acknowledges he made a comment that was not appreciated by the airline employees.
It was at that point, he says, that Sunrise representatives called the police. Officers boarded the aircraft and removed him. In the videos, other passengers can be heard defending him, saying he had done nothing to warrant such treatment.
What Wadley says happened next is the most serious part of his account, and CTN was not able to independently verify it: he says he was taken to a police station and held in handcuffs for more than an hour. He alleges he was not released until after the plane had departed, and that this was done on the instructions of a Sunrise manager.
The removal left Wadley trapped in Cap-Haïtien without funds. He only had 600 Haitian gourdes ( Less than $5 USD).
He was ultimately able to travel onward to the Dominican Republic only after a content creator, Sheila Guilloux, organized a GoFundMe campaign on his behalf.
Even so, his journey home remains unfinished. Wadley says he cannot afford to buy a new ticket.
He also says Sunrise offered to refund $500 of the roughly $748 he had paid, an offer he refused.
Sunrise Airways tells a different story, as laid out in a “Notice of Travel Ban and Refund” dated August 7, addressed to the passenger under booking reference 12QY1J.
In it, the airline says that following a review of the incident during boarding, it has decided to prohibit him from traveling on its flights, effective immediately. His conduct, the letter states, was “considered disruptive and inconsistent with the standards of behavior required for the safety and security of our flights,” and the operating crew requested the assistance of law enforcement to remove him from the aircraft.
The airline said the safety and security of passengers, crew, and aircraft are its highest priorities, and that behavior that interferes with a flight or requires law-enforcement intervention is treated seriously and may result in restrictions on future travel.
The notice also confirms the refund amount and helps explain the discrepancy. Sunrise wrote that it would refund $500.14 for the ticket issued for the Cap-Haïtien–Fort Lauderdale sector — the airline’s own leg — while noting that the refund does not waive its decision on his future travel eligibility. That accounts for the gap between the roughly $748 Wadley says he paid for his full journey and the roughly $500 Sunrise offered: the airline is refunding only the portion it operated.
Beyond the ban, Sunrise filed a formal complaint against Wadley Elbé with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
The Wadley case is not an isolated complaint. Sunrise Airways, Haiti’s national carrier, has faced repeated criticism over its reliability, and it now occupies an unusually powerful position: after suspending all flights to and from Port-au-Prince for security reasons, it is effectively the only airline offering regular direct service between Haiti’s northern coast and the United States.
That role has come under strain. The airline does not own its aircraft, relying instead on charter companies, and passengers have complained of canceled flights and long waits with little information about whether they will travel.
The airline’s own leadership has acknowledged the problems; after bringing in a new chief executive in 2026, the company said it was applying lessons from what it called its growing pains on the Miami route.
For the Haitian diaspora, that combination — heavy dependence on a single carrier with a troubled service record — is the backdrop against which Wadley’s ordeal unfolded. For now, he remains far from home, his return dependent on the same kind of community support that brought him to the Dominican Republic.
This article draws on the passenger’s account, videos circulating on social media, and a formal notice issued by Sunrise Airways. CTN could not independently verify the passenger’s allegations of physical mistreatment.
Sources: Videos of the incident circulating on social media; the “Notice of Travel Ban and Refund” issued by Sunrise Airways, dated August 7, 2026
https://ctninfo.com/banned-and-stran…-sunrise-airways/
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Editorial Disclaimer:
This article was originally written in English. Other language versions are produced using AI translation software, and errors are possible — the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio.
