NeedstoFly

I'm surprised that Schengen C visas don't give a transit visa exemption. The list of countries requiring transit visas is long (includes places like India, China etc.) What this implies is that the UK is giving up on carrying many Indians/ Chinese to Europe transiting via London. The only explanation I can think of is that the UK thinks people with C visas are still more likely to claim asylum in Heathrow vs in continental Europe.

Frequent flyer 101

Hmm, that doesn't sound promising.

How do you interpret this line about exemptions: "a visa for Canada, New Zealand, Australia or the USA (this can be used for travel to any country)"? Specifically the bit that says "this can be used for travel to any country".

Without getting into the Oxford Comma debate, do you think they mean that any of those 4 visas can be used for travel to any country or just the USA visa can be used for travel to any country.

Frequent flyer 101

Just to further add to this, I found a FT thread which states that the "(this can be used for travel to any country)" text was actually added later so it seems that this does allow for transit to any country: UK DATV exemptions for India

There is also a post on this blog about it: http://livefromalounge.boardingarea....thout-uk-visa/

The question around verifying the e-visa is still an issue though. As is the question about check-in staff being able to make sense of all this.

NeverFirst

There are two versions. the one for airside transit doesn't require the destination/origin to be the issuing country;

The landside one does;

(Of course, this doesn't address the need for the airline to verify the Australian visa...)

Frequent flyer 101

Yeah that's what I thought. So we seem to be good on the airside part. Now to figure out how to get an answer out of BA about the e-visa.

Times like these I really appreciate my British passport!

deeruck

I might have missed it, but why don't you apply for the transit visa if you're concerned? It's a shame to have to pay into HM Treasury if not required, but having one will certainly make for a lower stress level if the cost isn't a concern.

corporate-wage-slave

I was curious about that. You need biometrics to be done, but that is outsourced to VFS in Dubai, and would cost £40 or so. Turnaround time would be 3 weeks or less, and if you are married/CP'd to her, it's unlikely to be refused.

Frequent flyer 101

Because they keep your passport for up to 15 working days / 3 weeks. She needs her passport to go through some process to end her UAE employment visa which apparently takes up to 2 weeks also. That process is very strict there and it's quite a serious criminal offence if you don't do it properly and according to their schedule.

Yeah she's had UK tourist visas before, not worried about the rejection. It's just the time sink that we can't risk with the UAE exit process.

Smithy

As I said above, the BA system will not allow the agents to check your wife's Australian visa. There is no manual option available for an ad-hoc check of an Australia visa in the BA system..

:D!

I mean this in the nicest possible way but if your wife is a Belarusian citizen then why would you even think of booking a flight via the UK if your actual destination is the Schengen area?

There are so many ways to get from Dubai to the Schengen area directly and throwing this employment visa into the mix just makes it more complicated. If she isn't allowed on the BA flight (rightly or wrongly) then she can't even get back into the UAE.

Frequent flyer 101

Yeah good question. It actually made sense at the time because I had a multi-segment trip booked already. Plus, with the WTP / CE baggage allowance, we could take 4 large checked bags + 2 carry ons to move all her stuff, without paying excess baggage. As it happened, she was denied boarding. I'll write a post on that shortly to explain what happened.

Frequent flyer 101

So as I said, she was denied boarding in DXB because of this visa issue. I believe this was the incorrect decision based on the rules I've read.

We were travelling DXB-LHR-BUD in WTP + CE. My partner is a citizen of Belarus and holds a tourist visa for Schengen and had a digital Austrlian tourist visa. For anyone reading this for the first time, Belarussian citizens require a direct airside transit visa to do an airside transit at LHR. However, there are many exemptions from this: https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa/y/b...ewhere_else/no

My partner held a valid Australian tourist visa. It was definitely valid since we are currently in Australia as I write this. The issue was that this was the typical 'sticker/stamp in passport' visa. Often Aussie visas are digital, meaning that all the visa info is stored online and digitally linked to you passport. There are many ways for airlines, TAs etc to verify this and there is even an official App to store the info: http://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/Busi/v...n-online-(vevo)

Knowing that this was potentially an issue beforehand, and after reading the final line above which states "E-visas or e-residence permits are not acceptable unless your airline is able to verify it with the issuing country. Contact your airline for more information." I therefore tried to contact BA to ask if they would be able to verify this e-visa. It was actually very difficult to get a straight answer and everyone on the phone would just say "contact your embassy for visa information". I was eventually able to get an answer about this from BA on Twitter. They said:

I took this to mean that the airport staff will be able to contact the Australian authorities to verify an e-visa by phone if it has to come to that.

We arrive 3 hours before departure, expecting some extra time as check-in to deal with this. When asked about the transit visa, we presented:

1) A notification of grant of a Visitor (subclass 600) visa
2) A visa grant notice (with digital barcode)
3) All the printouts about visa requirements and exemptions.

This was passed to the check-in supervisor at DXB. She took a photo of the visa grant notices and sent them to a (Heathrow, I presume) airport liason officer via WhatsApp. The response was a No.

The check-in supervisor then said a number of things which were quite wrong. She was seemingly trying to imply that this wasn't a visa, and merely a travel grant authorisation (she thought it was the Aussie version of an ESTA). I won't go into it all and there were a number of other things she said which were incorrect. The bottom line is that she was given a "no" by the airport liason officer and I guess she has try an communicate that in as best of a way as she could.

So at this point my partner was denied boarding. She got a partial refund, but lost a few hundred pounds. She was able to book on another flight 10 hours or so later with another airline which avoided the UK.

It was quite a stressful situation, but everyone kept their cool.

I'm currently at a bit of a loss for what to do about this. I contact the BA twitter team who gave me a call, listened to my story and opened an investigation. Their result was that "The documents were checked by the Airport Liaison Officer and they confirmed this could not be accepted as an exemption to transit in London.". While this gives BA plausible deniability, my primary goal here is really to understand what the issue was, so that we can avoid this happening in future.

I'm unsure which of the following occured:
1) The e-visa couln't be verified properly by the liason officer
2) Australian visas can only be used for UK transit on a journey to Australia.
3) Some other reason

If anyone has any suggestions for what to do here to understand what happened, I'd greatly appreciate it. It certainly seems that in future it's better to be more cautious and always get a transit visa (this wasn't possible this time due to time constrictions).

lcyguy

The Airline Liaison Officer is a UK Home Office employee who advises airlines based overseas whether a passenger may be acceptable in the UK or not. There are several dozen based around the globe (there is certainly 1 if not 2 based in DXB)and they generally know their stuff! They do however advise only, the final decion to carry a passenger or not is down to the airline.
The ALO network also work very closely with their 5CC counterparts, so I would expect that your wife’s case was referred to his Aussie counterpart in Dubai.
Not to say an error wasn’t made in this case, but merely to give some background.

Andriyko

According to what was mentioned earlier in the thread, I believe it was the combination of both 1) and 2). Australian visas are checked automatically when the passenger is travelling to Australia, but there is no manual way to check them when the passenger is travelling elsewhere.