Worried about missing what seemed to be a looming deadline to get back home, we started looking for new tickets — without having canceled the old ones. Same-day economy tickets from Paris to New York appeared for thousands of dollars apiece. Because my credit card’s travel benefit has a 24-hour cancellation policy, I took the plunge and used it to buy two basic one-way tickets that, combined, cost more than $5,000. No sooner did I hit the “purchase” button than an update appeared on CNN: President Trump’s travel ban did not cover Americans in Europe after all, only foreign nationals. Whipsawed, we scrambled to cancel the tickets we had just bought — and quickly found it impossible.

Source: New York Times March 12, 2020 16:07 UTC