Last-minute flight changes are stressful — here's how to make them less so.
CBSN
Rerouting, rebooking, diverting, you name it. Making last-minute flight changes can be an enormous challenge amid the stressful holiday travel season. Now add COVID-19 and the fast-spreading Omicron variant to the mix.
Hundreds of flights have already been canceled last-minute due to pandemic-related staffing shortages. Many airlines remain understaffed and overbooked as the country returns to air travel after pandemic shutdowns.
Spirit Airlines cast bad weather and labor shortages as the main culprits behind travel chaos that led to the low-cost carrier canceling more than 1,700 flights in August. The scenario replayed in September, when Southwest canceled hundreds of flights during the course of a weekend, and again in October when thousands of fliers were grounded after American shelved more than 1,800 flights nationwide over a three-day period.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.