Do airlines have the right to check Schengen visas on intra-Schengen flights?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 10 Aug, 2023
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The Schengen rules imply that governments may not conduct routine passport and visa checks for travel between member states, except in extraordinary circumstances and by invoking special procedures (which several member states have currently done due to the “refugee crisis”).
Presumably this also mean that governments cannot require private transportation operators to conduct such checks (again, unless border controls have not been temporarily re-introduced).
However, the Schengen rules do not forbid private transportation operators from deciding for themselves that they want to conduct such checks for whichever ineffable reasons they might have. If there’s anything that legally prevents an airline from demanding passports of their passengers on Schengen-internal flights, it would be found in national legislation of the state where the demand is made (or, potentially, the state where the ticket is bought or whose law otherwise apply to the contract), not in the general Schengen rules complex.
In the absence of any rules that restrict what airlines can do, they can do whatever they find to make business sense.
Do airlines have the right to demand to see visas on intra-Schengen flights?
Yes, they do; just like they also have the rights to weigh your bags, deny you boarding, ask you to move from an exit row or restrain you on board.
Although no visas are needed to travel within the Schengen zone, but you should have a means to show that you have rights to be in the zone, and one of those is a visa.
I am not a friend of this explanation. Bags and such are their
business but playing “papers, please” needs to have a legal
background, doesn’t it?
No, it doesn’t have to have a legal background. It is part of the conditions of carriage which you agree to when you purchase the ticket:
a) Prior to purchase of a ticket and boarding aircraft, the passenger
shall on call of a carrier’s staff member or state authorities be
obliged to identify him/herself and present the relevant travel
documents, and answer questions of security nature, if appropriate, or
submit the requested personal data to the eligible state authorities.
Pursuant to government regulation, the carrier may be requested to
submit passenger data or access these data.
Being their planes and their business, unless they are not breaking a law they are allowed to pretty much everything they want.
Put the following two things together:
- Airlines are responsible for sending you back in case you can’t enter the country you are flying in.
+
- A Visa is not a magic object that teleports you back to your own country the same exact moment it expires.
Being inside a Schengen nation is not in itself a proof that you are allowed to be there: what if you entered illegally? Or what if your Visa is expired?
Without a preemptive check of your visa you could fly to a nation you are not allowed to go anymore, get caught at immigration, and sent back…and it will be an hassle for the airline company who allowed you to fly there.
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Credit:stackoverflow.com‘