Hacker News Reader

Comment by zcbenz | Hacker News Reader

As a holder of third world passport, you will be really truly fucked up when your flight temporarily changed destination and landed on a country to which you don't have a visa.

This is what would happen to you:

1. The aircrew would tell you everything is fine and totally ignored you after landing. And you got no compensation from the airline.

2. The custom control would hold you in a small black room from 12 hours to 7 days, along with all kinds of illegal immigrants.

3. Usually you would end up getting expelled to your passport's country, with it recorded on their system and even stamped on your passport, which means it will become much harder for you to apply for a visa.

View on HN

Reminds me of the movie White Knights (1985), where a dancer who had defected from Russia was on an airline that had to make an emergency landing in Russia. As the plane is making an emergency descent, he runs to the bathroom and starts tearing up his passport and flushing it. The plane crash lands and he wakes up in the hospital with a nice Russian agent who dumps his torn up passport on his lap and says "Welcome home". Ah, movies from the cold war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHpKeRSLnF8

"A dancer"? He's played by Mikhail Baryshnikov!

I can only imagine that they identified him from photos somehow and then went through the trouble of digging his passport out of the toilet tank just for the showcase effect.

And on a lighter note, Terminal (2004).

Having experienced it myself, I'd say "it depends" - on the airline and the country.

In my case it was a connecting Air France flight from Paris to Mumbai that had to turn back to Charles De Gaulle after encountering problems en-route. Half the passengers were Indian nationals with either single-entry/expired Schengen visas (like me) or people passing through from North America or the UK.

The Air France staff wasn't particularly apologetic about it. They did everything that they were supposed to but half-assed it. Everyone who needed transit visas got them but we had to spend 6 very frustrating hours in line with not much communication. They sent sandwiches for passengers waiting in line but vegetarians got left out. The airline put up everyone in a hotel, with shuttles to and from the airport, but I got to the hotel at 3 AM (after waiting in line for a transit visa for so long) and the next flight was the following afternoon, so I couldn't get much sleep.

Air France isn't exactly known for good treatment of people from 'lesser' nations. This seems to be a longstanding problem.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/indian-passengers-get-h... (2013)

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Air-France-regrets... (2009)

My experience was in 2006 and the 2009 article feels very familiar. I accept that they can't control how long French authorities take to grant people transit visas but they could definitely do a better job of communicating and making sure passengers are comfortable in the meanwhile.

I've boycotted Air France ever since.

I'm a US citizen and this screwed me when landing at the wrong airport in China once (China Southern Air). It was just supposed to be a layover landing in Shenzen on the way to Vietnam, but we got diverted to another China airport and it was late at night.

The entire plane of non-chinese citizens was stuck in the customs control area, while all the chinese could leave and go to a hotel for the night. Nobody spoke english and they could not provide us with any food or water (or even enough seating, people were sleeping on the ground).

We had to wait until the next morning before they cleared us into the departure terminal (where we finally got water) and then we had to wait for that to open as well so we could book flights to continue onwards.

Never flying that route again.

Can you give an example?

I've never had this happen to me and my assumption was that if you stayed airside (didn't cross immigration) you would be fine.

I was once on a flight from Phuket to Bangkok, connecting back to my home in Tokyo. In such a case Thailand makes you pass immigration on the first flight, so Phuket, then your transit in BKK stays on the airside.

While taxiing to take of, the front landing gear broke so we had to go back to the Phuket airport (still airside) until another plan could be made available. Since we would not make the connection in BKK, they collected everyone's passport to stamp them with a temporary transit visa as we'd need to go to a hotel in Bangkok to wait for the next connection.

After 2-3h the new plane arrived, we flew to BKK and upon deplaning at the gate, a flight attendant came in holding a trash bag filled with all of our passport and proceeded to dump it on the floor and let the 100 or so passengers sift through the pile to find their own passport...

Good times.

Thailand has many more "interesting" administrative techniques!

When the plane has to land on the nearest airport, the chosen airport is very likely to be a small one and does not have any kind of international zone, and even without custom control.

Yeah, that is truly unfortunate. Thankfully that has never happened to me.

In some countries like the US you have to go through immigration before going to a connecting flight.

Many countries require a transit visa AFAIK.

For example: https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/transit-schengen-visa/

A lot of countries will waive this requirement if you have a visa from the US or another first-world country. Have transited through CDG,MXP,AMS,LHR using a US visa.

Maybe you're flying third world->third world and have not been able to obtain the first world visa, though.

That's rough, generally having at least 1 first-world visa makes things a lot easier.

I was not allowed to transit through Sydney to New Zealand even though I had valid US B1/B2, Permanent residence in one of the schengen countries, Canadian visa and UK visa.

Indians require transit visas when traveling through Canada. (I almost learnt this the hard way when flying through Canada, as a complete coincidence I had a canadian visa from a prior trip that was close to expiring)

Right, but Canada doesn't have a distinction between airside and landside transit. Although as a rule of thumb you should always check the rules for every country you are passing through.

A friend of mine learned it even harder way he wasn’t allowed to board the plane and sent back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com