Originally Posted by
Lux Flyer
If this, or something similar is what was presented then I could easily see an airline employee mistaking it as being a visa, especially for destination that prior to the pandemic did not routinely require visas. Regardless, whatever the tour guide and passenger received they thought it was the visa, so there's no reason to expect an airline employee is going to think anything different. Visas come in all shapes and sizes, airlines aren't in the business of validating it as being authentic or even the correct visa for a passenger's circumstance. All they need to do is show due dilligence that they reviewed the entry requirements for the passenger and they presented what appeared to be the correct documents. The validity of the documents to the individual's travel situation are up to the individual countries border staff to figure out, else we might as well deputize the airline gate staff for every country they manage a departure too if we're going to expect them to make advanced determinations on visa validity.
From my limited experience, usually the airline system (e.g. Amadeus) will require a document number (e.g. visa number) and a expiry date to be input into the system.
I can see the application id in the sample which can be interpreted as document number, but no where can I find anything that is similar to expiry date.
Then depending on the level of integration of the destination country’s custom system, Amadeus can transmit this information to them to validate the visa information.
This is all based on my personal experience with AC (who uses Amadeus) but not UA. I once attempt to fly to DUB under a UK visa, checkin agent had to input information from my UK visa and obviously Ireland custom system was rejecting that info. The checkin agent even showed his screen to me quoting this was what Ireland custom system says about my visa.
I had to pull the Britain-Ireland visa waiver program website for the agent and argued about the interpretation. He believed I can only go to Ireland from UK, while I told him that I only need to enter UK once to activate my UK visa before going to Ireland. In the end the agent had to consult his supervisor and apparently the supervisor wasn’t sure either. In the end they decided to flip a coin (what I was told) and I won.