According to Sunwing Vacations spokesperson Daryl McWilliams, the passengers' behaviour when confronted by passengers and crew, "went way beyond uncooperative."
And besides their defiant attitudes, McWilliams told CTVNews.ca the three refused to say where they had stashed their spent cigarette butts.
"Not knowing where they were disposed of prevented us from checking whether they had been extinguished properly," McWilliams explained in a telephone interview Monday.
The combination of unruly behaviour and the fire hazard posed by potentially still-smouldering cigarette butts hidden somewhere on the plane made this a "very, very serious infraction," McWilliams said.
As a result, the flight was re-routed to L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda, where the fuel-laden jet was forced to make an overweight landing.
That meant a Sunwing mechanic had to be flown to Bermuda to conduct a structural inspection of the plane, McWilliams said, in addition to a separate search of the passenger cabin to find the discarded butts.
By the time those searches could be conducted, McWilliams said the plane's crew had exceeded their allowable duty time, necessitating an overnight layover.
As a result the airline had to pay for the plane's nearly-200 passengers and crew to spend the night in Bermuda Friday, as well as put up the passengers stranded in Punta Cana by the delay.
