Scarce Flights, Visa Issues Snarl Students’ Plans to Reach U.S.

Students from around the world are eager to study at U.S. colleges in the upcoming fall semester after the Covid-19 pandemic confined many of them to their home countries and left some attending virtual classes in the wee hours of the morning.

Now, getting to campus is the hard part.

In China, which accounts for a third of the roughly 1 million foreign students that flock to the U.S. in a typical academic year, the decline in available flights to American cities has been so severe that some students and their parents have resorted to lining up charter planes. Others, including from ...