Though I am not saying that any of this is ok, it is not out of the realm of what I've come to expect from many airlines. As someone who lives in the United States, I learned a very long time ago that I need to help myself when something goes wrong with my travel plans and that I can't expect the airlines to be looking out for me or to offer the assistance I need when I need it. Sadly, this was already a reality before COVID so I expect it to be even worse while we're still in the deep of this pandemic. Of course there are airlines that will take much better care of their customers, many of them are under regulations that require them to do so, but many of us don't have the luxury to fly those airlines regularly and thus don't have those high expectations.

We have flights out of South Africa booked for mid- February. They've been booked since last spring. They were booked with vouchers that have an expiration date so it is obviously ideal for us to be able to use these but you better believe that we already have alternative plans in place. Those alternative plans have nothing to do with the recent flight bans, they were in place before that occurred, as given the ever changing regulations during this pandemic it was prudent to have options. Could the alternative plans also fail? Absolutely! But I figure that if I am going to travel right now then I better be willing to accept that we could run into some difficult hurdles.