Why can’t I transit through London?

January 20, 2012

Question: I’m an Indian national residing in the United States. I was scheduled to fly from Houston to Mumbai on British Airways recently. My itinerary involved a short stopover in London.

In Houston, while checking in with British Airways, I was denied boarding because my work visa was not stamped in my passport. The original visa stamped in my passport had expired and I was traveling to India in order to get my renewed visa stamped at the U.S. consulate in Mumbai.


I was carrying an application that permits me to continue living and working legally in the U.S. and to travel abroad. However, before re-entering the U.S., I’m required to obtain a valid U.S. visa stamp in my passport.

I tried my best to explain this to the check-in agent; however, she was adamant in not allowing me to transit through London. This was a Catch-22 situation for me — I could not go to India without my visa stamped in my passport and I could not get my visa stamped unless I visited the consulate in India.

The British Airways check-in staff was very unsympathetic and unhelpful. I was quoted a charge of around $500 to allow me to fly on my return ticket when I said I was ready to fly out to Mumbai with a different carrier. I’ve tried to get a partial refund from the airline for my unused ticket, but it hasn’t responded. Can you help me? — Mita Upadhyay, Corpus Christi, Texas

Answer: British Airways should have made its travel policies regarding visas crystal-clear to you. I checked with the airline, and it insists it did.

In order to transit in the UK without a visa on an Indian passport, you need one of seven types of documents, which may include a valid U.S. visa sticker in your passport or a valid U.S. permanent resident card.

“Our staff in Houston would seem to have been correct to deny this passenger boarding,” said an airline spokeswoman. “There are links on ba.com that allow passengers to check their passport and visa requirements for their journey.”

At the same time, British Airways should have been more compassionate about your situation, in the interests of good customer service. You couldn’t get the required stamp without visiting the consulate in Mumbai. Given your predicament, it would have been a nice gesture of the airline to reroute you on a flight that didn’t require a stopover in London.

But it wasn’t required to do that. Unfortunately, having all your paperwork in order is your responsibility and yours alone. Even if British Airways didn’t disclose its visa requirements on its site, you would have still been responsible. And yes, even if your travel agent had told you otherwise.

Still, British Airways offered a refund of $125 and a $600 flight credit, which represents half of your airfare to Mumbai — an exceptionally generous resolution.

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94 comments

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  • Anonymous

    Yeah – but often it’s a matter of work schedules too.  I’ve had travel plans that were nixed because the boss wanted my butt in my office chair.

  • Anonymous

    To answer the poll question, yes the airlines do a good job.  They have links to Timatic which we use all the time.  The OP got here, she needed to pay attention to the details for getting home.   

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Z3AVBBJN4I7SVPZIXW2S37LHQA photoohideustopublish

    This reminds me of the opening minutes of _Ghandi_If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. Mahatma Gandhi

  • Jen Hanuschak

    Isn’t there an Indian embassy or consulate somewhere in the U.S. where Mita could’ve gone to get this visa stamp, instead of having to fly back to India in the first place? It would have prevented this whole problem.

  • Anonymous

    The Indian embassy or consulate can’t do jack about securing a US visa. There’s an consulate in Houston, but I believe they simply forward all requests to New York. All one could do with the Indian officials would be to get a passport renewed, which was done.

    A lot of visa requests can only be served by the US State Department overseas.  I’ve known of a lot of people who ended up going outside the US to get their requests serviced.

  • Anonymous

    But Mita was merely going HOME to India. What is the logic of not allowing Indians to transit UK to go home to India? BA refused to board Mita in Houston oh his way to Mumbai.

  • Anonymous

    True.  But I would think even the most Dilbert-esque boss (and I’ve had them) should see the logic of allowing someone on a work visa that can only be re-approved in their home country to actually go to that home country.  It’s not like you’re canceling a weekend trip to a B&B – there are significant legal consequences.

    And if the boss doesn’t concur, that’s when you ask HR to step in, because they don’t want the hassle. 

  • Anonymous

    ypw, allow me to explain further. Countries like the UK, Canada, and the USA require transit visas for some foreign nationals.

    If you are one of these unlucky foreigners you will need to get a Visa just to transit these countries. 

    So let’s say a Pakistani tourist wants to go Mexico and his flights transit in LAX, then he needs a visa for the USA. The same is true for Canada unless the airport is YVR or YYZ and for specific airlines only.

    Usually major HUB Inl’l. cities have airports that have airside transit connections so they can facilitate TWOV.  [This makes it possible to TWOV is HKG, SIN. FRA, MUC, AMS, etc.]  I believe some airports (like I think PEK) allow landside TWOV.

    But the UK, even if LHR has airside connections still refuse to grant TWOV to some nationalities.

    In the case of Mita, he was simply returning home to his native India from Houston. But BA denied him boarding because he did not have a visa to transit in Heathrow to change planes to Mumbai. [I wonder whether BA will transport a deportee from the USA to India via LHR.]

    ——

    Please do not confuse this case with a Visa ENTRY requirement. In Haneda, the airline wanted to make sure you had a US passport so it did not have to check if you needed a visa to ENTER the USA.

  • Anonymous

    But here is the ultimate irony – Mita was stopped from going home to India. Usually it is the other way around.

  • Anonymous

    A foreigner can change his/her STATUS and extend some visas inside the USA, but they must go overseas to get a US VISA stamped in their passport. Used to be able to just go to Mexico or some place closer, but that changed a long time ago. They have to go HOME to their native country and get a US VISA there. This was what Mita was doing. He was simply trying to get HOME to India.

  • Anonymous

    The UK will for most travellers (including all US citizens, and Indian citizens with valid visas for the country they’re visiting that isn’t India). The US is unique in its bizarre refusal to allow this.

    The reason for the UK’s rule is to stop the UK being responsible for people who are deported when they arrive at their destination – so if you don’t have a US visa and you’re from a country that’s not part of VoA, you can’t come to London to transfer onto a flight to the US, otherwise you’d be sent back to London when you were refused entry to the US.

    The fact that it’s written in a way that also stops people flying *from* countries where they don’t have valid visas *to* their home countries (where, obviously, they will be allowed in without question) is really, really stupid, and is something that nobody in their right mind would expect anyone to do.

  • Anonymous

    But it shouldn’t matter *from the UK’s point of view* whether she’s got a Green Card, whether she’s been overstaying on a temporary work visa, whether she’s been working on a tourist visa, or whether she’s been deported and flagged never to be allowed back in. She’s going *to India*, not *to the US*, and she’s got an Indian passport so she will certainly be let in to India.

  • Anonymous

    “I wonder whether BA will transport a deportee from the USA to India via LHR”
    Haha. Good point!

  • Anonymous

    My situation was a little more complicated than that, but I won’t elaborate.

    What I noticed when researching this was that Dubai is a vaiable stop for 24 hours because they apparently don’t require anything as long as the passenger is scheduled to be in the airport less than 24 hours.

    It sounds like it’s in their interests to be as friendly to those using DBX as a hub.

    However, do they have any kind of security to keep people from leaving the airport without a proper visa to do so?

  • Anonymous

    By the way, I found out that Mita could mean two different pronounciations, where one is a male name and the other is female.  I guess it hasn’t really been clarified.

  • Anonymous

    Dubai actually gives Americans (and  some other nationalities) a [Free] Visa Upon Arrival good for 30 days.

    Emirates (EK) can also request and get for passengers a 96 hour “Transit” Visa. The meaning of transit here is that one gets to get out of the airport and tour/stay in Dubai.

    DXB is a very busy hub to Asia, and the wait in the airport can be very long (as you said). Many Asian passengers love to shop in Dubai and request long layovers.

  • Anonymous

    Some countries don’t have US diplomatic missions, although I believe that requests would be assigned to a specific US embassy or consulate depending on the home country and perhaps specific location.

  • Anonymous

    “However, do they have any kind of security to keep people from leaving the airport without a proper visa to do so?”
    Yes – they have immigration control like any other country. Trying to leave DBX without a visa (unless you’re from a country where the UAE has a visa-on-arrival agreement) will prove as successful as trying to go through US immigration without a visa.

  • http://profiles.google.com/fox1066 Susan Fox

    Why in the world would anyone depend on an airline to tell them about these kinds of requirements? That is just asking for it. BA was pretty darn generous.

  • Anonymous

    However, I was thinking that they had that hotel right in Terminal 3.

    http://www.dubaiairport.com/en/passengers/AirportServices/Pages/DubaiInternationalHotel.aspx

  • Anonymous

    I don’t recall exactly what happened when I was at Haneda.  I remember we were stopped for about 90 minutes, and were able to leave the plane.  I seem to recall that we waited in a closed off waiting lounge at the gate, and that new passengers had to go through checkin before they were allowed in the departure area.

    Of course what I’m thinking of is someone waiting for a separate connecting flight at a different gate who is probably going to want to kill some time in the terminal shopping, eating, or even sleeping.

    The last time I did anything like that was at Kimpo Airport.  As a US citizen I was allowed to leave and I did go shopping in Seoul before taking a cab back to the airport.  However, I thought it’s possible for anyone in the secure area of an international terminal to wander around freely or even leave.  Or have things changed?

  • http://twitter.com/luisa_hr Luisa H

    I think a lot of the confusion with Mita’s situation comes from the situation with immigration.
    I suspect the “application that permits me to continue living and working legally in the U.S.” was an approved I797. I797s grant people legal STATUS, which is different from a visa and only valid while in the US. It can be used to obtain a visa at the home country’s consulate once you leave, however, once you leave the US you are no longer in any status. So Mita was trying to enter the UK with an expired US visa and an approved document that has no immigration value outside the US and can now only be used to obtain another visa in India.
    But this situation is not a Catch-22 at all. There is a visa requirement for Indian nationals in transit through the UK, but that visa can be an UNEXPIRED US visa or a valid UK visa, it has to be one or another. So why not just get a UK visa for transit through Heathrow? You can get that at the British embassy in the US…

  • Anonymous

    Isn’t the Catch-22 that s/he needed a current visa on her/his passport but the only way to make it current was to get to India and s/he couldn’t fly BA home because her/his US Visa was expired?

    There wouldn’t have been a Catch-22 is s/he took another route. Perhaps over Asia or the Middle East.

    Obviously Mita did not know that when s/he bought the BA tickets.

  • http://twitter.com/luisa_hr Luisa H

    S/he makes it sound like there is no way the visa s/he needed could have been obtained in the US, which is true for the US visa. But to go through London s/he needed a UK transit visa, with a valid US visa potentially being used as a substitute.
    S/he could have gotten a UK transit visa in the US and avoided all of this.

  • Anonymous

    Is there a reason that there is no mention of where she purchased the ticket? 

  • Anonymous

    Exaclty, Luisa H. I doubt she’d have any trouble getting a British transit visa. 

  • Anonymous

    Asiansm Dan, that used to be true, but not anymore. People from some nationalities are allowed to change flights (without exiting the transit area) without a visa, but some nationalities considered more of a risk requires transit visas.

    By the way, that affects passengers connecting in US as well: it hasn’t been possible, since 2003, for international travelers that require a visa to come to US to take connection flights without a visa (for instance, a Chilean travelling Santiago-Miami-Nassau or a Russian travelling Moscow-Seattle-Toronto or a Brazilian travelling Sao Paulo – Los Angeles – Tokyo).

  • Marcin Jeske

    If the airlines are able to enforce immigration policy when a customer checks in, they can just as easily inform the customer when the ticket is purchased. International flights in and out of the US require passengers to submit travel document details prior to flight, so they have all the information needed to properly inform the customer. “Yes, we know what the rules are, but won’t tell you unless you break then… oh, and let me tear up that ticket for you.”

    I am confused by the refund/credit of $725 (“half” her ticket price). Did Mita end up flying only the return leg and so was refunded half the ticket, or fly both ways on another carrier and British kept half the money? I would expect this to be treated like an Involuntary Denied Boarding where options would include a full refund or credit for unused segments.

  • Anonymous

    Google it. Apparently this is a sore spot to many Indians. Here’s one sample. http://www.immihelp.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63690

  • Anonymous

    Yes, this is IDB. Her whole ticket would have been “refundable” at that point – Houston.

    If she could not get a US Visa approved while in Mumbai? The other half of the ticket would have been useless, too.

  • Anonymous

    I posted earlier asking why we don’t know where she purchased her ticket.  If she had called the carrier then questions could have been asked.  But my guess is that it was done online, hence just a point and click with no information provided.

  • Anonymous

    the Airline follows the law.  It does not take into account stupidity.

  • Tara McCann

    I am really tired of reading stories about the big bad travel industry because “no one told me”  I needed something.  What ever happened to personal responsibility.   In todays world with all the information readily available courtesy of the internet, people should not expect any refunds because they didn’t bother to find out the correct information.

  • Tara McCann

    What ever happend

  • Anonymous

    A friend of ours had the same problem, and was not able to leave the plane in London …although they were travelling with a different airline.

    http://www.egypt-holiday-illness-claims.co.uk/

  • Anonymous

    If you read the information on entry into the UK, it must be a VALID visa stamp, not just an application for one.  We may not like the rules, but there is really no way around them.

  • Anonymous

    But it does, due to the possible threat of deportation FROM the US, leaving them the burden of someone no longer authorized to travel back to the US, and them needing to take responsibility that the people are really moving on to India, not just staying in the UK.  AGAIN – we may not like the rules, but there are no ways around them.  So having the VALID paperwork, rather than just an application, would have avoided this problem.  And getting their paperwork arranged BEFORE expiration would have been  a better choice as well!

  • Anonymous

    Yes, I read and POSTED them above.
    I’m questioning the LOGIC of the rule.
    So does John.

  • Anonymous

    Work schedules can easily be impacted by he expiration of a work visa – after all, no visa, no work!  So NOT a viable excuse!

  • Anonymous

    Actually, what the gate agents in International Flights are trained for and what a reservation agent is trained for are two very different things.  Basic immigration information is available to a reservation agent, but specific requirements, based on a MULTITUDE of differing conditions, NO.  While the gate agents look for certain things specifically – and are far more versed in the needs of their station.  You cannot expect a computer system to have information on each/every possible situation that impacts standard visa requirements – but the gate agents will be responsible for following those laws, and know that job.  A reservation agent isn’t an embassy or a consulate — so why do we expect them to operate as if they are?

  • Anonymous

    Not in every instance.

  • Anonymous

    This is not always the case — the work visa is extended from his home country, and needs to be extended from there for continuance in the US.  So – back to India (perhaps if he had done so in a timely matter, this wouldn’t be an issue!)

  • Anonymous

    No, that doesn’t make any sense.

    If BA were worried about her not being allowed back into the US, then that’s an issue for the return flight. Obviously, they shouldn’t let her board the return flight BOM-LHR-IAH if she can’t sort out a US visa while she’s home, but that’s irrelevant to this flight.

    Unlike US airports, but like nearly all non-US hubs, LHR has completely different routes for airside and groundside passengers, so there is no opportunity for her to stay in the UK and no need to try and stop her. Transit passengers at LHR do not pass through UK immigration, and do not have any opportunity to leave the airport.

    You’re right to say that those are the rules and people need to stick to them – but you’re wrong to claim there is any sane reason or excuse for the rules.

  • Anonymous

    Also UK can always deport him to India as soon as he arrives London. That would be the desired result anyway.

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