After postponing flights for more than a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight is making its return.
We are thrilled to announce that we will resume Honor Flight operations with SSHF Mission #57 on Saturday August 28, and will begin contacting veterans soon whose 2020 flights were postponed. We are thrilled to be honoring & thanking our #veterans again! #honorflight pic.twitter.com/K8eP8VxTql
— Stars and Stripes Honor Flight (@SSHonorFlight) June 4, 2021
The organization made the decision to postpone flights in June of 2020, less than two months after the pandemic set in. Stars and Stripes Honor Flight President Karyn Roelke told Wisconsin’s Afternoon News that canceling the flights was one of the hardest things she’s ever done.
“It’s been really hard to tell our vets that they have to wait,”Roelke told WTMJ. “They’ve had to wait so long already, decades to be thanked, so its been hard to postpone flights even though we knew it was the right thing to do.”
The first scheduled flight of 2021 will be held on August 28th. Roelke says the first few flights will be limited only to vaccinated veterans and guardians, but that will likely change for later flights.
“We will be able to accommodate people who aren’t vaccinated later this fall but we are focused on making the day safe for veterans and we want to make sure they get honored and the day they deserve as safe as possible,” she said. “Veteran safety is priority number one.”
Since its inception, Stars and Stripes Honor Flight has flown more than 76-hundred veterans to Washington DC. You can get more information, sign up a veteran, or sign up to be a guardian here.
