19-Year-Old Texan Stranded In Hong Kong Shares Frustrations Following Airline Cancellations
HONG KONG (CBSDFW.COM) — Stuck in China, 19-year-old Switch Brillo just wants to get back to her parents in Houston.
She's studying in Hong Kong, but her university looks like a ghost town.
"It's basically empty right now," Brillo told CBS 11.
With a dozen diagnosed cases of the coronavirus there, she said she's staying inside.
"I'm currently in my student dorms right now and every time we go inside, they check our temperature and make sure we're wearing our masks when we go out," Brillo said.
As fear began to spread, her school extended its holiday break, then moved all classes online.
"It's been very tense," she said. "You're on the train. Somebody coughs, and like everyone moves to the next car."
Her parents bought her a plane ticket home, but her three o'clock flight to DFW airport got delayed until midnight and then again to 6 a.m. the following morning.
"Literally, in the next 30 minutes, it got canceled altogether and that's when I freaked out," she said.
American Airlines announced Friday it was canceling flights to and from mainland China through late March. Hong Kong isn't part of the mainland, but Brillo says she's still finding it hard to get out.
The airline, she says, now has her booked on a flight to Japan and then Los Angeles, before she can hopefully head to Houston.
"I really don't know what's going to happen in the next 24 hours for me," Brillo said.