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.