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Comment by klintcho | Hacker News Reader

One thing though; which airline will fly only american citizen back from europe? will they fill a plane with those customers only? I think my main concern is that most if not all major European airlines will cancel all flights, regardless if there are a couple of US citizen on the flights. Meaning it's probably still going to be somewhat problematic to get back (if not from London then of course)

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I'm trying to find more information about this, as I'm a tourist visiting the US flying back on Sunday. Does anyone know how this will play out, will they keep flying FROM the US to Europe?

If they cancel flights, you'll have to route via the UK.

I suggest getting back to wherever it is you want to spend the next couple months asap.

The levenshtein distance between tourist and terrorist is only 4, so my prognosis looks bleak.

But fun aside, I think you are still fine. To my knowledge no flights from the US seem to be cancelled so far. If they really do cancel flights, you could try to use another route trough another EU country. But I think that is still unlikely to be required. That might change though, but probably not until Sunday.

"The levenshtein distance between tourist and terrorist is only 4..."

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Maybe people don't know what a levenshtein distance is?

> The levenshtein distance between tourist and terrorist is only 4, so my prognosis looks bleak.

The distance in speech is not that far off either, I've found. When I visited the US for the first time, the border agent asked me what I was there for. Tourism, I said. My English pronunciation not being clear enough, he said "excuse me? Can you say that again? TERRORISM?". After that I learned to just say "vacation".

You will want to move while you can. I got caught out due to the 9/11 flight ban and that really wrecked my life for a while.

I'd advise flying back ASAP, you don't want to risk being stuck in the US during a medical emergency.

They might lose landing rights. That's often enough reason to keep flying, even with empty planes.

And that's what has been going on for a few days inside Europe now. Airlines flying empty or near empty planes to keep their slots. The European Commission was meant to make a move about that, I don't know if that's been done already or not.

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