jphripjah

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7644071.html

Can someone explain to me what happened here and what the likely reason was why she was denied boarding while her family was allowed to board?

Were they not sure her passport was hers, perhaps because she looks a lot different at age 17 than she did when the passport was issued?

The article suggests the airline didn't give her passport info in time, but I thought that although the airlines say they need it 72 hours in advance they really only need to submit it before the airplane doors close. I recently bought a same day international flight and it wasn't a problem.

Also, why is this a TSA issue? I thought CBP was the agency that screened who entered the USA and who didn't.

Loren Pechtel

How could this be TSA as it was a foreign airport?

Sounds like the airline goofed up.

jphripjah

Well, the airline was talking to US authorities whoo ultimately determined she couldn't board. I've read a few articles about the incident. CBP says they weren't involved. TSA says that they, TSA, were involved.

Then she had to go to the US consulate in Istanbul to resolve it. Could her name match someone on the no fly list?

Often1

Who knows? You are reading a third-party report without any independent verification which apparently names the wrong US agency or it names the right US agency and there was some other issue (where TSA does play a role, e.g., setting security standards for US-bound flights).

That's the problem with extended FT discussions based on newspaper articles reporting highly-specific incidents.

GUWonder

Her name doesn't match on the no-fly list. I doubt that her name matched even on the day she attempted to fly or when she wanted to get help at the US Consulate but got turned away due to having no appointment for ACS.

Not all issued tickets for US-bound flights are in bookings with the required DHS/TSA information in them at time of attempted check-in. And even adding in and transmitting all the required info at attempted check-in may be too late for the person to be cleared for travel by the USG and make the check-in cut-off times.

TSA sometimes has staff at foreign airports. CBP sometimes does too.

It could be a TSA goof-up/limitation, that and/or in conjunction with an airline or travel agency goof-up, technologically or otherwise. I'm inclined to conclude that this would probably not have happened if the TSA involvement in international US-bound travel was eliminated entirely.

The TSA blames the airline

http://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/l...rkey/99395572/

"Turkish Airlines did not provide the Transportation Security Administration with the necessary information so that a 17-year-old Knoxville resident could board a flight back to the United States, a TSA spokesperson said Monday."

Even the TSA more or less admits this incident is due to an issue of what information the TSA wanted but didn't receive in the time in which it wanted it.

jphripjah

Well, when does TSA require the advance passenger information? Is there a firm deadline? A few weeks ago I booked a flight from HKG-ICN-LAS on the day of flight, so TSA couldn't have gotten the info 24 hours before I boarded in Korea, more like 12 hours. I guess that was enough.

GUWonder

It's a bit more complicated than even a 0-2 hour cut-off. But in practical terms, there does end up being a cut-off of sort sometimes. I'll see if I get around to explaining in more detail how this can go wrong and sometimes does, more so when the US citizen is perceived as being "foreign" by name (as ridiculous as that concept is in an American context).

STBCypriot

I wonder what info the TSA was missing. Shouldn't they have had all the necessary information already from the data provided on the outbound (from the USA) flight?

GUWonder

They don't always. Sometimes even information entered into in a booking at time of original ticketing doesn't get processed by the TSA prior to trying to check in for a/the booked flight(s).

jphripjah

Yeah, maybe they are greater sticklers on this for passengers flying from Jeddah via Istanbul than for passengers flying from London.

It's still odd that her family processed correctly and she wasn't. That suggests to me that there was some actual paperwork screw up and not just pure racism.

GUWonder

My bet is that it's technical screwup or a combination of technical screw up and ethno-religious prejudice.

I have seen situations where some in a travel party get cleared to board while the USG blocks another in the same travel party from flying in/from/within/over the US. Sometimes it's the result of at least one blunder and sometimes it's not a blunder at all.