Airline breakdown upends holiday leave for service members

Amiah Manlove used most of her savings to buy a $711 airline ticket to go home for the holidays. Then the Army private got stuck midway through the over 4,000-mile journey from Hawaii to Indianapolis and had to sleep on an airport floor.

Manlove, 20, an active-duty soldier stationed in Oahu, was among the many travelers whose holiday plans were upended when Southwest Airlines canceled wave after wave of flights across the country. Her father then spent his rent money to buy her a new flight after she was stranded at the Phoenix airport.

“This is the only time that I have to come home, the time we were going to cherish most for the next year — and to lose any of it is just devastating,” said Manlove, who was finally able to make it home the afternoon of Christmas Day. “They would have done anything in their power to get me home.”

Travelers who are in the military are often on fixed schedules that make it challenging to roll with the punches of chaotic airline breakdowns.

The Army typically shuts down basic training and advanced individual training schools for a 10-day break during the Christmas season. Active-duty soldiers can use some of their 30 days of accrued annual leave if they want to travel home during that period, but transportation costs aren't covered.

While she was stranded, Manlove's family searched frantically for solutions, and her father, a home health aide who relies on disability payments, used the $650 he saved for rent to purchase the only flight he could find — a one-way flight to Louisville, Kentucky, a two-hour drive from Indianapolis.

When he came to pick her up, they were so happy to be reunited that he was in tears before she opened the door to get in the car, she said.

“It was heartbreaking,” she said.

Manlove, who is scheduled to fly back...