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Query about being refused to fly

Query about being refused to fly

Old Jun 28, 2016, 12:16 am
  #1  
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Question Query about being refused to fly

Hi All,

Looking for your advice. I am unfortunately not seasoned on the topic of travel in the Europe region and have a bit of advice to ask.

I aim to be as objective as possible and I recognise I am entirely to blame for the situation we found ourselves in, a tough lesson to learn, but I am concerned about the airline's role in this and want to seek some feedback from you.

My wife and I travelled to Europe from Singapore for our honeymoon. For this, she needed a Schengen visa. The visa requires all travel to be booked (not paid) before applying. I really should have used a travel agent but lesson here is learned. I booked a full itinerary with a particular airline from SIN to FCO, VCE to ATH, ATH to SIN. Each of these transit via the Airline's hub.

Unfortunately as I now understand fully, the transit between VCE to ATH was via a non Schengen country. It is also a country that requires a visa for entry but not for transit < 24 hours, which we did not have as we did not need it per the itinerary.

The Italian embassy approved our travel plans and issued a single-entry visa. I, sadly, took this as validation of the travel plans and did not reconsider the plans thereafter. I realise this is my responsibility and I don't seek to minimize it, only as an insight to my thought process.

We left VCE and were stamped out. I now know (add this to the list) that this completed the single entry visa. We were carried to the transit airport without incident.

Upon boarding for the leg to ATH, we were denied boarding. This is specifically where a situation I never imagined unfolded. We were held back by the gate agents who assured us they would assist us. After boarding all other passengers, they literally pulled back the ropes and started walking off.

I followed them and asked what we would do now, they shrugged and said "I cannot help you". I asked if anyone could, they said no.

We were now stuck airside at the airport with no entry visa. I couldn't find any way to speak to an airline representative about how we could proceed. Neither the help desk nor any rep would talk to me. I called their HQ, they repeatedly said they'd get back to us, 6 hours later and nothing.

Eventually, I gave up. I rented an airport hotel so I could get wifi, and booked a flight back to SIN with another carrier. Once the booking was confirmed, we very nervously lined up at the immigration line, as our bags had been offloaded and we did not know where they were. Unsurprisingly, passport control had no idea what to do with us.

We were sent for the next few hours to various parts of the airport by various people. The time was getting closer and closer to our flight and I was almost convinced we'd not make it out. I offered for us to be treated as visa overstayers so I could pay a fine and get on with things, but that was not an option.

We found a guy eventually at a transfer desk who took pity on us. I can't thank him enough. He actually took up our case and negotiated with the immigration officials and, on our word that we would return within the hour with our cases and boarding pass, let us in.

We then went through the process of locating our bags from the lost and found office (another hour or so) and just made our flight on time.

My question is this - I feel that I was lucky enough to have just enough diplomacy and conviction behind me to get out of that situation but I fear for others. It seemed like a really poor way of dealing with this from the airline. I can't imagine how refusing to carry someone on the basis of not having a valid visa but instead stranding them in a different country without a valid visa is at all a reasonable strategy.

Does anyone with better knowledge of the airline industry think there is a basis on which I could get an adverse finding against the airline for this practice? I would hate this to happen to someone else. My travel plans were what they were (we ended up flying elsewhere in Asia and had a great time) but I find it hard to let go of the idea that people who do not know their rights and/or are not well versed in complex travel laws are being stranded the way we were.
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 7:44 am
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Sorry about the hassles you encountered. It's happened to many of us.

Not sure why you think it's the airline's fault. You showed up at an airport where you didn't need a transit visa but then couldn't go forward because you didn't have a visa for your destination country and couldn't go in the country where you were because you didn't have a visa. Not the airline's fault.

What you experienced is an example of why most airlines check visas closely during your initial check-in. They end up being responsible for you if you are stranded like this. It happened to me once in Calcutta and I ended up sleeping on a bench in the airport for a day before the airline could get me out.

You're lucky that the airline was able to get the immigration official to bend the rules. The airline could have just flown you back to your starting point and let you figure out what to do about your luggage. I'd thank the airline for doing what they could to help you.

What airline?
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 8:27 am
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sorry, i dont think you have much of a case, but i can atleast offer sympathy.

i can easily guess at the carrier . as a self branded "seasoned" traveler i took a calculated risk around a 'gray' space and got into not-too-dissimilar problems with this carrier.

really the only incident of this type ive incurred.... without positive resolution.... in my frequent flying.

fortunately the consequences were much less severe - i booked an overnight train out. but i fully understand the behavior/manner/and motivation of the people associated with that location and situation: not at all helpful.

anyway, live and learn
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 12:20 pm
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IIRC if the airline had flown you to the final country they would have incurred a fine
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 3:20 pm
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someone should code and sell a program to airlines that check which countries on your
booked itinerary require a visa. a quick pop-up would let you know that with a
singapore passport, you'll be required these additional visas

sorry, just woke up and feeling innovative haha, but anyways sorry to hear that happen.
imo half the airlines fault for not catching this at check in, and half your fault for not
double checking...
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 5:33 pm
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Nope. It is 100% the passenger's responsibility to possess all required documents for every segment of the ticket flown. Period.

The sole reason that air carrier's check documents is to protect themselves from being fined and stuck with passengers at transit and arrival points when passengers arrive without valid documents. Carriers do not check documents to help out passengers.

IATA's TIMATIC database can be accessed without cost from a number of locations including:

https://www.united.com/web/en-US/app...aspx?i=TIMATIC


but that would not have helped OP here. He obtained a single use Schengen visa and then attempted a second entry.

The best solution is to either pay a great deal of attention to detail or to pay a good travel attention who books a lot of complex international itineraries. OP is extremely lucky that his carrier helped him out. Many would have simply left him to fend for himself.
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 7:05 pm
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While I completely agree OP should have been more vigilant, I am surprised Italian consulate missed it too. In my experience, they were very vigilant about where I made the connection and if I got out of the airport (granted I was asking for multiple entry schengen to visit Croatia and some of my flights were through Russia )

OP, do you mind sharing the 'transit country'? I am curious now.
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 7:55 pm
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To the OP, sorry to hear about your trouble. That is certainly one of the more unique situations I've heard of.


Originally Posted by Gino Troian
someone should code and sell a program to airlines that check which countries on your
booked itinerary require a visa. a quick pop-up would let you know that with a
singapore passport, you'll be required these additional visas
They already have it, as has been mentioned already. It's called TIMATIC.


Originally Posted by OP
I can't imagine how refusing to carry someone on the basis of not having a valid visa but instead stranding them in a different country without a valid visa is at all a reasonable strategy.
The basic answer has already been provided:


Originally Posted by FatnLoud
IIRC if the airline had flown you to the final country they would have incurred a fine
In more detail, airlines flying international routes are required to check the travel documents of passenger prior to transporting them. In this case, your wife was traveling to Greece and didn't have the proper visa to enter Greece, and thus was denied boarding. Although ideally this would have been caught earlier in your particulars, that's definitely the right thing for the airline to do on the ATH-bound segment in this case.

Most countries will assess a fine to an airline that knowingly transports an inbound passenger that lacks proper documents for entry. I don't know what the situation is in Greece, but as an example, the United States can assess a $10,000+ fine to the airline in such a situation for each such passenger. They don't do this every time there is a documentation problem, as sometimes they can be subtle, but almost certainly would in the case your suggesting: they detect a passenger that clearly lacks the needed visa, but transports them anyway because the passenger wants to try to "work it out" upon arrival. No carrier is going to knowingly let you try to do this. Although your overall situation was anything but obvious, that's not the case for the segment where you were denied boarding.

As to why countries almost universally act this way, there are lots of reason. Your situation of why you lacked a visa is not the only one. I can imagine many others: Traveler is on a watch list. Traveler applied for a visa but was denied. Traveler has a criminal record. Traveler was previously deported from the destination country. Traveler plans to claim asylum upon arrival. In any of those cases, it's in a country's strong self-interest to prevent the undocumented person from traveling there in the first place, rather than having to deal with them upon arrival.

As far as the notion that Italian embassy should have caught this when the visa was applied for, that certainly would have been nice. But, as far as they were concerned, your itinerary involved travel to Italy, and they granted you the correct travel document for that, and it worked.

Another aspect of the situation is that the visa form asks you to check a box for Single Entry, Two Entries, or Multiple Entries. I'm guessing that you checked Single Entry. The civil servant's job at the embassy is to process the visa application as submitted, and you met the requirements for a Single Entry visa and were granted exactly what you applied for. Even if they had noticed the situation, I could see an Italian (or any other kind of) civil servant deciding that it's "not their problem" and that the easiest thing to do would be to just process the application as submitted.

Think of this as a fun story you can tell everyone about your wild European vacation - maybe it will seem funny 10 years from now.

Last edited by Steve M; Jun 28, 2016 at 10:35 pm
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 9:38 pm
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I don't see any wrongdoing by any airline here. Airlines check the flight you're checking in for, not your whole itinerary.
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 10:27 pm
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Originally Posted by confusedtravellr
The Italian embassy approved our travel plans and issued a single-entry visa.
In retrospect, you should have applied for a multiple- (or double-) entry visa here, especially as the cost is the same.

The airline could and should have done more to assist you but I don't think there's anything more you can do now, other than telling us which airline and airport it was.
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 10:46 pm
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There's one other thing that occurs to me: you said that the VCE-xxx-ATH segments were on the same carrier, whose hub is at xxx. Were both of those segments on the same ticket? Were you given boarding passes for both segments at VCE? If is, it is a bit unusual for the airline not to catch this at that point. I would have no expectation that they'd catch this prior to departure at SIN. But as to each portion of the journey, I'd expect them to check documents at the point of check-in, including all segments for which boarding passes are being issued.

Note that I'm not saying that they have an obligation to the passenger to do so, but just that that would be my understanding of standard procedure.
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Old Jun 28, 2016, 11:48 pm
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Sucky experience, for sure, to be filed under "Lessons Learned"

Outstation personnel is often poorly trained and you should often have low expectations of what they know or should know.

I once almost missed a flight out to JFK from FCO/MXP (on AZ no less) because the check-in agent didn't know how to properly enter the advanced passenger data into the system.

She kept saying that "The system won't accept you, you can't fly, sorry, can't do anything about it."

I had to literally look at her screen and help her enter the data correctly.
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Old Jun 29, 2016, 12:07 am
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I'm struggling to understand what the transit country was, the only obvious European non-Schengen country with a major airline hub I could think of was the UK, but Singaporean nationals don't need a visa to enter the UK.

Anyway, while the posters above me are correct that it is ultimately the passenger's fault for not possessing the correct visa to complete the itinerary, the airline check-in agent at VCE should have checked for a valid Schengen visa as that leg of the multi-city trip terminated in the Schengen area. In this way the OP would at least have not ended up stranded in the transit country but could have booked travel directly home from VCE (or made alternate arrangements to transit at a Schengen area hub).

Agents often don't do this, only checking the required documents for the first leg and this results in the passenger being unduly transported to (and potentially stranded at) an intermediate point.

Since the traveller did not have a visa to enter the transit country, they should only have been transported there if they had valid documents to continue their journey, which they did not.

What the airline effectively did was transport the pax to the transit country without a valid visa to terminate their trip there. Denied boarding should have occurred at VCE, not the transit airport.

For example, if I flying Vancouver-Shanghai-New Delhi using the China TWOV program, the check-in agent in Vancouver should ensure that I have the correct documents to enter India otherwise I am not eligible to transit China without a visa and they are transporting me to China without proper documents.
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Old Jun 29, 2016, 12:12 am
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I'm guessing it was Russia; SVO is SU's hub, which is a SkyTeam member.

A further clue is that the OP didn't need a schengen visa, but would have needed a visa to leave the airport at the transit point. This would be consistent with, for example, a USA passport. I don't know whether the same would be true for a Singapore passport.

ADDED: It might have been IST, depending on the OP's passport (with visa on arrival for a fee applying for USA passports), but my guess is that the spouse would not have been able to enter Turkey without a visa granted in advance if a Schengen visa was necessary.

Last edited by MSPeconomist; Mar 27, 2021 at 5:19 pm
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Old Jun 29, 2016, 12:13 am
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Originally Posted by MSPeconomist
I'm guessing it was Russia; SVO is SU's hub, which is a SkyTeam member.

A further clue is that the OP didn't need a schengen visa, but would have needed a visa to leave the airport at the transit point. This would be consistent with, for example, a USA passport. I don't know whether the same would be true for a Singapore passport.
Well if it was SVO that certainly explains why the airline agents were particularly unhelpful.
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