World Cup Fans Are Spending Thousands Only to Have Their Tickets Canceled Hours Before Games, and Royal Caribbean Is Offering a Free Cruise to Volunteers Who’ll Give Up Their Overbooked Alaska Sailing — Plus More Travel News!

Here are this week’s travel news headlines from around the web and interweb I found the most interesting. Take a look:

• World Cup Fans Are Spending Thousands Only to Have Their Tickets Canceled Hours Before Games

This one is infuriating. Thousands of World Cup fans who bought resale tickets through StubHub are showing up to stadiums only to find their tickets don’t exist. One man, John McNicholas, 65, spent over $1,200 on two tickets, drove four hours from New Jersey, and hiked two miles from his hotel to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts — only to learn his tickets had fallen through at the gate. His friend had flown in from England specifically for the match. They waited until halftime hoping for a last-minute solution. Nothing came. The root cause is speculative ticketing, where resellers list seats they don’t actually own yet. StubHub’s “FanProtect” guarantee promises comparable replacement tickets, but “comparable” means comparable in price, not location, so you could end up in the nose bleeds after paying for field-level seats. Consumer advocates say the system is broken at every level. If you’re heading to a World Cup match, buy directly through FIFA’s official platform. Period.

• 130 Miami Airport Concession Workers Have Authorized a Strike Right in the Middle of World Cup Season

About 130 food and retail workers at Miami International Airport, organized with UNITE HERE Local 355, have voted to authorize a strike against concessions operator Areas USA. The dispute centers on wages, with workers asking for a $3.75 hourly raise after more than six months of bargaining and Areas countering with roughly half that. One cook on the team earns $18.35 an hour and told reporters his rent just jumped from $2,100 to $2,400 a month. A walkout could temporarily shut down around 10 restaurants and retail stores in Concourse D, right as World Cup crowds are flooding MIA. Negotiations are ongoing. If you’re transiting Miami in the next few weeks, pack snacks just in case.

• Royal Caribbean Overbooked Its July 19 Alaska Sailing and Is Offering a Free Cruise to Anyone Who’ll Switch

This is the second Royal Caribbean Alaska sailing this season to be overbooked, following a similar situation on Voyager of the Seas in June. This time it’s Serenade of the Seas’ 7-night roundtrip from Vancouver on July 19, visiting Sitka, Endicott Arm Fjord, Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan. Guests willing to switch to an alternate Alaska sailing this summer get a 100% refund of their cruise fare, a 50% future cruise credit, the same or similar stateroom category, and reimbursement for non-refundable pre-purchased travel expenses. That’s essentially a free cruise plus money back on top. Nobody is being forced out, but given those perks, Royal Caribbean likely won’t be short on volunteers.

• A Southwest Flight Attendant Removed a Couple for Alleged Intoxication, and the Internet Can’t Agree on Who Was Wrong

A video making the rounds on Twitter shows a Southwest flight attendant removing a couple from a flight over what she described as intoxicated behavior. The woman insisted she’d only had one glass of wine and was “doing cartwheels and backbends,” which the crew said was exactly the problem. The attendant held firm that anyone exhibiting intoxicated behavior is not allowed to board, regardless of what they actually consumed. The passenger requested a sobriety test. It didn’t help her case. The internet split roughly down the middle: one camp said the crew was absolutely right and a private airline can refuse service to anyone; the other said the attendant was on a power trip. There is video, and honestly, watching it you can see arguments for both sides.

• Winter Storm Warnings Were Issued in Three States in Late June. Yes, Really.

The National Weather Service issued actual winter storm warnings for parts of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming at the end of June, with Yellowstone National Park seeing up to six inches of snow. A deep upper-level trough dragging in an unseasonably cold air mass from the northern Pacific dropped temperatures 15 to 20 degrees below normal in some areas. Ski resorts including Big Sky, Alta, Brighton, and Timberline reported brief summer snowfall. Meanwhile, the eastern third of the country was baking under heat index readings forecast to reach 115 degrees in some spots. Weather whiplash doesn’t quite cover it. If you had summer outdoor travel plans in the Rockies this week, hopefully you packed layers.

• This Hawaii Couple Sold Their Car Rental Business, All 31 Cars, and Moved Onto a Cruise Ship for 15 Years

Lanette Canen and Johan Bodin were living the good life in Hawaii when the travel bug hit hard. They sold their entire auto rental fleet, all 31 vehicles, and bought a cabin on a cruise ship. That was the beginning of a 15-year plan to circumnavigate the world continuously. So far they’ve visited 57 countries and nearly 200 ports. When people told them they’d be bored within three days, Johan’s response: “Oh, we loved every second.” The thing they didn’t expect? The friendships. They say the onboard community now feels like family, recognizing fellow passengers in remote mountain villages thousands of miles from the ship. They’ve spent around $200,000 so far on the lifestyle, and they have no regrets. They document the whole journey on their YouTube channel “Living Life on a Cruise.”

• There Is a Full-Size Boeing 777-200ER Permanently Parked Next to a Soccer Field on a University Campus in South Korea

Korean Air retired one of its Boeing 777-200ERs and donated it to Inha Technical College, the same institution owned by Korean Air’s parent company the Hanjin Group. The plane was disassembled at Gimpo International Airport and then reassembled right next to the campus soccer pitch, replacing a much older Boeing 727 that Korean Air donated back in the 1990s. Aviation maintenance, cabin crew, and ground staff students now train on a modern widebody rather than a decades-old narrow-body. As an AvGeek I love this story. It’s a genuinely practical use for a retired aircraft and beats scrapping it for parts.

• 11 People Were Injured When a Boston Duck Tours Boat Overturned on a Ramp Near the Charles River

The duck boat “Molly Molasses” was being towed onto a ramp with 31 people on board on June 27 when the tow rope suddenly snapped and the vessel rolled onto its side. Eleven passengers were injured, several visibly bleeding according to witnesses, though remarkably no one ended up in the water. Boston Duck Tours suspended operations for the remainder of the day and is working with the U.S. Coast Guard and Massachusetts State Police on an investigation. Here’s the troubling context: the NTSB first flagged serious duck boat safety concerns in 1999 after a sinking in Arkansas killed 21 people, and again after a 2018 sinking in Branson, Missouri killed 17. A 2022 congressional bill was supposed to hold the Coast Guard accountable to those recommendations. Duck boats have a long history of safety concerns that still haven’t been fully resolved.

• BYD Is Testing a New AI Self-Driving System on the Seal, and the Chip Race With Nvidia and Horizon Is Heating Up

BYD is currently testing Horizon Robotics’ Super Drive 2.0 platform on the BYD Seal, with the company’s own chairman reportedly evaluating the system in person. BYD has developed its own custom AI chip, the 4nm Xuanji A3 with 700 TOPS of computing power, but that chip won’t hit production until 2027 starting with premium Denza models. In the meantime, using established third-party processors saves BYD roughly 1,500 to 4,000 yuan per vehicle, which adds up fast at their production scale. BYD previously announced it would cover crash damage caused by its self-driving system in China. The broader question of whether automakers or their AI chips bear liability when a self-driving car hits something remains very much unanswered everywhere else.

• DARPA’s Radical X-65 Drone, Which Has No Flaps or Ailerons Whatsoever, Is Almost Ready for Its First Flight

Aurora Flight Sciences just installed the triangular wings on the X-65 experimental drone at its Virginia facility, with DARPA targeting a first flight before the end of 2026. What makes this aircraft genuinely wild is what it doesn’t have: no flaps, no ailerons, no rudder, no moving control surfaces at all. Instead, 14 nozzles distributed across the airframe blast precisely timed jets of high-pressure air to steer the aircraft, a technique called Active Flow Control. A cleaner airframe means better aerodynamics, less weight, fewer mechanical failure points, and for the military, significantly reduced radar signature. Every other system on aircraft has been transformed since the Wright Brothers flew in 1903, except how pilots steer. DARPA’s X-65 is the most serious attempt yet to change that. There’s a video of the concept that’s worth watching.

Were there any crazy or interesting travel news stories you found interesting that I missed? If so please drop a comment below and include a link to the story! – René