QueenOfCoach

No.

From the destination country's point of view, they offer tourist visas for (eg) 6 months. A tourist may arrive for a planned short stay, but then extend their stay for some reason up to the expiration of their tourist visa. The destination country wants to make sure the tourists's passport is valid for the entire time the visa is valid. They don't want to be stuck with someone with an expired passport, unable to leave, and dependent on charity or illegal paid work for their support.

The resolution is simple: Passengers must check entry requirements before making travel plans and ensure they have proper documentation. It is 100% the passenger's responsibility.

onuhistorian0116

I’m pretty sure agents at international hubs like JFK and LAX do not know the passport rules for every country, but their computer certainly does.

In interlining/codesharing agreemens the passenger pays the baggage fees per the long haul carriers policy, the agents at the point of origination don’t memorize every interlining carrier’s baggage fees, they collect baggage fees as directed by the computer. If systems for interlining and codesharing carriers are able to share information for collecting baggage fees at the point of origin, they should also be able to perform a document check at the point of origin.

Yes, not having the proper documents is ultimately the passengers responsibility, but casual travelers may not know the rules. The OP’s grandmother made an easy mistake for those who are not regularly dealing with interational travel and visas. I’m anal retentive, hell I just booked a Ural flight with an international to international connection in Yekaterinburg, Russia. I spent some time researching to make sure I didn’t need a transit visa before I booked the flight, even though I’ve made several international to international connections in Moscow. I have learned through a large amount of international travel that to expect consistency is to expect trouble. But, most people aren’t like that.

This is honestly something that would be very easy for the airlines to do. It already sucks that through her mistake, she lost a trip to Laos, that is a large amount of money to eat. It adds insult to injury that she flew a transcon flight to LAX only to have pay a likely high last minute fare to fly a transcon back home. This could have been prevented with a simple and short document check at the originating airport.