By HANNAH SAMPSON | The Washington Post | Published: February 26, 2021
Stars and Stripes is making stories on the coronavirus pandemic available free of charge. See more staff and wire stories here. Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter here. Please support our journalism with a subscription. Would-be travelers who canceled flights last year may still be waiting for safer conditions before they return to the skies. They shouldn t assume their flight vouchers will be doing the same. After travel shut down last spring, the number of people flying plunged in the United States, sometimes falling by millions in a single day. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, those who no longer planned to fly were entitled to a refund only if the airline canceled their flight or changed it significantly.
What happens to the milestone trips of 2020? Hannah Sampson (iStock/Washington Post illustration) Kaylin Portillo Chavez and her boyfriend, Cameron Ervin, started planning in June of 2019 for the occasion that would follow a year later: their college graduations and five-year anniversary. The California couple put aside $30 a month and any extra cash from birthdays and Christmas to spend on a week-long vacation in Mexico, where they planned to relax and celebrate before both started law school. Instead, the coronavirus forced them to cancel their June plans and keep the celebration extremely local in Sanger, Calif. Kaylin Portillo Chavez and her boyfriend, Cameron Ervin, celebrating their fifth anniversary in June after a canceled trip. (Courtesy of Kaylin Portillo Chavez)