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Virgin’s visa bungle: how common is this with airlines?
In light of the recently reported bungle by a Virgin airlines employee who prevented a valid visa holder from boarding a flight out of Australia, the question must be asked: Do the airline check-in staff who have the power to decide whether a passenger gets on board have any decent training on visa rules?
Should airline check-in staff be required to have at least a basic certificate issued by an independent immigration training organisation before they are allowed to work at the airline check-in counter? They are after all playing judge, jury and executioner to unwary travellers dream holidays and travel plans.
These questions must certainly be on the on minds of Indonesian tourists Betty and her mother Lam-In
According to a report in The Daily Telegraph today, Betty and Lam-In have a 12-month multiple-entry visas that allow stays of up to three months at a time in Australia. Last month they planned to fly Virgin to Fiji with friends for a long weekend then return to Sydney. It would be fun and keep their visas intact.
But at Sydney Airport, a Virgin employee refused to check them in. Perhaps she misread the DIBP instructions on the computer. Perhaps she misunderstood it or was clueless. But she chose to rule the visas were no good as her interpretation was that “the date of return was more than three months after they last entered Australia”. Betty’s pleas to speak to a supervisor were ignored with the explanation that the supervisors would say the same thing and were too busy anyway.
The reporter says, he asked for the screenshot of what the employee saw but Virgin never provided it stating that Virgin, however, provide repeated assurances it had done the right thing. But further investigations with DIBP revealed that, “According to departmental systems a visa check was conducted by Virgin Airlines on that day, which showed that the clients held valid multiple entry visas.”
Presented with this, the airline’s story changed: “Virgin Australia has conducted a thorough investigation and we recognise a mistake was made on this occasion. We sincerely apologise to the guests involved … and we have since arranged a full refund as a gesture of goodwill.”
So there you have it, clueless check-in staff making big decisions without even bothering to escalate the matter. The mistreated and embarrassed mother and daughter are not satisfied with Virgin’s actions and plan to take the matter further, according to the news report.
As an RMA I personally have had clients on several occasions call me from the check-in counter of various airlines with similar problems. I have managed to speak with the staff and have the issue escalated and resolved each time. Perhaps the exchange of credentials helped - another reason to have an RMA on your side.
Has anyone else faced similar issues at airline check-in counters?
Comments
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Thursday, 22 May 2014I must say that I have never heard it happen from inside Australia going OUT but certainly from OUTSIDE Australia coming IN and I agree that this is an important area for consideration in terms of training... after all, a move to travel has a considerable financial and emotional cost which should not be further heightened by untrained staff on the other side of the counter...
Since the inception of the label-less visa, I've had a number of issues with people being questioned overseas when they checked in (if they had not brought in their visa grant email verification or whatever) but it was relatively easy to resolve, as Jerry said, by escalating it up and knowing exactly what to say on behalf of the affected person.
From the website of the Australian Embassy in Singapore:
"...The Australian Government issues electronic visas. All visa records are stored on a central database in Australia. When you check-in to fly to Australia, airline staff electronically confirm that you have a valid visa to travel to Australia before you board the plane..."
the question is whether all staff are appropriately trained, and one would hope they are.
As a matter of interest, a link to "Australia's entry requirements" manual which is an interesting read - this would be part of the info counter staff would get as part of their training? who knows: www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/visa-entry/_pdf/Aus_Entry_Req_full_manual.pdf (current as @ November 2013)
What Virgin did is the mirror of what happens in counters all over the world to Australia and perhaps was poor form BUT it is clear that these types of situations will be on the increase, as a requirement to get into or 'back' into Fortress Australia. -
Thursday, 22 May 2014
I had some similar cases over the last few years, the best one was when the check-in attendant in Sydney International had even called over one of the immigration officers to my client on a tourist visa who wanted to board a flight to NZ, as the system showed that he had no visa at all to stay in Australia. Bea is right, such bungles are more frequent at overseas check-in and after the first few middle-of-the-night panic calls I got into the habit to hammer into my clients brains to print their visa grant letters and start waiving it for the very first sign of confusion at check-in.
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Friday, 23 May 2014
It's unbelievable that the airline company stopped someone from inside Australia trying to get out! If so, the company failed miserably on the most important issue, in my opinion, which is if the airline staff has come to a conclusion that the visa holder had irregular or a no valid Australian visa this airline staff had the duty to call the airport immigration officer to report them in. Where's common sense?
Immigration blog
Don't these airline staff have a central phone number to call to validate their position if they want to exclude someone from a flight?