{"id":6271,"date":"2014-05-13T10:57:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T15:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=6271"},"modified":"2017-08-14T10:34:10","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T15:34:10","slug":"airlines-departure-leaves-international-students-scrambling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=6271","title":{"rendered":"Airline\u2019s departure leaves international students scrambling"},"content":{"rendered":"

– Tanner Schubert<\/p>\n

This is Part 2 of a three-part series that looks at the impact that loss of airline service into and out of Hays has had on various departments and groups at Fort Hays State University. Part 1<\/a> looked at the impact on the Athletic Department and its recruiting efforts. Part 2 (below) looks at the impact on international students who are dealing with canceled flights. Part 3 looks at the impact on searches to fill faculty vacancies. All of the writers are enrolled in Comm 240 News Reporting.<\/p>\n

With Great Lakes Airlines leaving the Hays Regional Airport, many international students now have questions about how they are going to get home and if they will get home on time.<\/p>\n

Great Lakes was scheduled to end service in Hays April 30, and was even given the option to stay until July 1, when Sky West was originally scheduled to come into Hays and start business. Great Lakes not only didn\u2019t take this extension, it opted to leave Hays March 31, leaving the entire Hays area grounded.<\/p>\n

The Hays Regional Airport, on its website<\/a> issued this statement regarding Great Lakes discontinuing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHays Regional Airport regrets the inconvenience caused by the cancellation of service,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

Great Lakes also had difficulties getting in contact with students and passengers who had booked flights. So the International Student Services Office at Fort Hays State University has been working with students to ensure they can get refunds for their flights and a way to get home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very problematic that they left before their contract time,\u201d said Carol Solko-Olliff, the director of international student services at Fort Hays State University. \u201cWe have around 406 international students enrolled, and a large majority of them go home, or travel in the summer.”<\/p>\n

A group of around 150-200 students had already booked their flights home, nationally and internationally, through Great Lakes, the only air service provider in Hays. Those students, after learning of Great Lakes\u2019 departure, had to contact Great Lakes to get their tickets refunded and now have to find another way to Denver to catch their flights home.<\/p>\n

The International Student Affairs Office is trying to coordinate with the Athletics Department to try to ensure that those students can catch their flights in Denver.<\/p>\n

\u201cAthletics has been very good in being flexible and working with us,\u201d Solko-Olliff said. She added FHSU is planning on providing buses to Denver at the end of the semester. Students can then pay a small fee to ride those buses to Denver to catch their flights home, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

– Tanner Schubert This is Part 2 of a three-part series that looks at the impact that loss of airline service into and out of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,11],"tags":[1315,1314,1307,1306,1316,1318,1317],"class_list":["post-6271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-area-news","category-news","tag-carol-solko-olliff","tag-flyhays-com","tag-great-lakes","tag-hays-airport","tag-internationsl-student-affairs-office","tag-sky-west","tag-tanner-schubert"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6271"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6366,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6271\/revisions\/6366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}