evening. i m jim acosta. have a good night. meantime, celebrities helping make the world a better place coming up next. have a good night. tonony y hawk provividing underresourced showing safe places to skate and connect. the best thing i could do is provide more state parks. soccer superstar alex morgan bringing opportunities to girls on and off the fieield. i i m so happppy to be hehere . this is cnn heroes: sharing the spotlight. i m anderson cooper. for 17 years we ve recognized hundreds of impressive individuals as cnn heroes. these passionate men and women work tirelessly, often without a lot of money or attention, to solve problems that they see in their communities. tomorrow night we re going to be honoring the top ten cnn heroes of 2023 and naming a new cnn hero of the year on cnn heroes: an all-star tribute from the museum of natural history in new york. tonight we re doing something different. for the next hour, we re going to share the stories of s
and what the implications are of living in a tourist town where large numbers of unvaccinated people may come here all throughout the rest of the season. yesterday i interviewed a man who is a petty cab driver here, and he was one of the break through cases. i want you to take a listen to what she shared with me. i felt invincible for a while and i was kind of going out, enenjoying my life, doing things. i think i figured, you know, because i knew i had been exposed previously when i wasn t vaccinated and so i think i figured like if i m vaccinated and i hadn t caught it already when i was unvaccinated, there s going to be no chance that i m going to get it. and i guess that s probably my message to young people my age that it s still possible. reporter: and michael, you know, folks like him, they are, according to the business owners and the locals here, they re the people who are most likely to get exposed because they work with tourists, they re at bars, and sometimes interactin
that plane. in fact, in this this room is where they give final approval for takeoff. dispatch a flight is two people legally responsible, the dispatcher and the captain on the flight. reporter: so they both have to sign off. they both have to sign off. reporter: joe is a 20 year veteran of the airlines. like many here, a former pilot. united s operations trorl center, or occ, isn t customer service. it s not the room where your ticket price is pet. nor is it where they track your lost luggage. but it is pretty much everything else. from this room, senior staff in virtually every department oversee united s is operations at five u.s. hubs. chicago, denver, los angeles, san francisco, and washington dulles. and thousands of domestic and enter national slights. for the most part, it all comes through this area. reporter: difficult decisions taken in in room, shifting a plane s root every so slightly to make up for a late departure. preparing a flight crew for a possible holdi
you always win. it doesn t always happen when you want it to, but i ll be ready for the next match. make sure you check out the book and you ll read venus interview with soledad o brien in there, as well. ever wonder who exactly makes the final call to delay or cancel your flight? we ll show you next. plus, why you could be standing up instead of sitting down on a future flight. standing room only on an airplane. imagine that.
somebody else is basically controlling wherever that airplane goes and when it goes. reporter: so far united hasn t faced the severe fines imposed by the department of transportation, but that s meant turning some delayed planes back to the gate and canceling the flight. we re making it work. doesn t mean that it s not painful to the passengers who don t understand that we re operating under this wall that will fine us $27,500 per passenger on a flight. reporter: when it comes to delays, there s the uncontrollable causes like weather and the controllable causes like an air traffic control system that needs a serious upgrade. and it does slow us down. it does impact us. reporter: ali velshi, cnn, chicago. summer is in full swing. for many people that means vacation time. flying just about anywhere can cost a pretty penny. rick, what are the best deals out there right now for this flying public? we ve had a really tough summer for deals.