Richard Birch­wood

As calls for greater eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al ties be­tween the Caribbean and Africa in­ten­si­fy, I wish to ad­dress a se­ri­ous im­ped­i­ment to this long over­due project.

A few months ago, my Ugan­dan wife at­tempt­ed to board a KLM flight from En­tebbe, Ugan­da to Port-of-Spain for our wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny. She pos­sessed a valid visa is­sued by Port-of-Spain. How­ev­er she was de­nied board­ing by KLM on the grounds that her “pa­per­work” would need to be sent to KLM’s Am­s­ter­dam head­quar­ters for “val­i­da­tion”.

A KLM staff mem­ber fur­ther de­clared that this was KLM’s pol­i­cy to­wards “the Caribbean”.

For the next two days, my wife was in­ter­ro­gat­ed at KLM’s of­fice in Kam­pala. They want­ed to know what was her busi­ness in T&T and the na­ture of her re­la­tion­ship to this Trinida­di­an man she was sup­pos­ed­ly go­ing to vis­it. They de­mand­ed doc­u­ments ver­i­fy­ing the va­lid­i­ty of her visa and proof of her par­tic­i­pa­tion in our wed­ding, even though no such proof was re­quired by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials of T&T. They re­fused to tell her why she had been de­nied board­ing. No apol­o­gy was ever is­sued for throw­ing our plans in­to dis­ar­ray.

Fi­nal­ly, in a tru­ly des­per­ate and grotesque re­sponse to her ques­tions and com­plaints, they called the po­lice. The po­lice ar­rived and af­firmed my wife’s right as a cus­tomer to ask ques­tions about her de­nial of ser­vice.

In re­spond­ing to our le­gal de­mand let­ter, KLM as­sert­ed its right to treat pas­sen­gers in this man­ner in or­der to avoid neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions in the event that a pas­sen­ger is de­nied en­try at a bor­der. But they are not the on­ly air­line that has to deal with this prob­lem. Who­ev­er heard of any oth­er air­line in­ter­ro­gat­ing pas­sen­gers for days, de­mand­ing doc­u­ments that are not re­quired for ter­ri­to­r­i­al en­try, bad­ger­ing pas­sen­gers to pro­vide proof of the va­lid­i­ty of their visas, and rum­mag­ing through their pri­vate af­fairs?

On the sec­ond day of her in­ter­ro­ga­tion, KLM staff in­formed my wife that hav­ing the cor­rect trav­el doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed no guar­an­tee of the right to board a plane. Many com­plex fac­tors were in­volved, they lec­tured, in­clud­ing whether a pas­sen­ger con­formed to a cer­tain pro­file. What pro­file did my wife con­form to oth­er than the fact that she was a Ugan­dan women fly­ing to T&T for her wed­ding? They would not tell us.

But we can sur­mise what they meant. There are sev­er­al sto­ries on the in­ter­net of African and Asian trav­ellers who were sub­ject­ed to sim­i­lar treat­ment by KLM. Ac­cord­ing to one vic­tim, KLM is “ad­dict­ed to hold­ing Africans”. An­oth­er sued the air­line for racial dis­crim­i­na­tion af­ter he was pre­vent­ed from fly­ing from Kenya to Brazil while his white col­league with al­most iden­ti­cal trav­el doc­u­men­ta­tion was al­lowed to board. Some were even forced to change car­ri­ers in or­der to reach their des­ti­na­tion af­ter be­ing de­nied by KLM.

In their state­ment of prin­ci­ples, KLM claims that they “do not dis­crim­i­nate, dis­ad­van­tage or harm oth­ers on the ba­sis of any dis­tinc­tion in­clud­ing race, sex, na­tion­al or so­cial ori­gin …”. So why are they ac­cost­ing African and Asian trav­ellers with valid trav­el doc­u­ments?

In their writ­ten re­sponse to us, KLM claimed to be act­ing un­der the dic­tates of im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties, pre­sum­ably in Am­s­ter­dam. But if they cared about their pas­sen­gers, they would con­duct their ex­tra­or­di­nary screen­ing pro­ce­dures in ad­vance, in­stead of em­bar­rass­ing peo­ple at air­ports and wast­ing their time.

Pas­sen­gers en­dure sig­nif­i­cant ex­pense and in­con­ve­nience pe­ti­tion­ing for­eign gov­ern­ments for visas, trav­el long dis­tances to reach air­ports, and take valu­able time off from work to fly to time-sen­si­tive en­gage­ments. They de­serve bet­ter than to be in­ter­cept­ed as they are about to board, way­laid for days, in­ter­ro­gat­ed like sus­pects to a crime, and forced to miss wed­dings, con­fer­ences, fu­ner­als, or car­ni­val.

We in the Caribbean must ask KLM to clear the air with re­spect to its “Caribbean pol­i­cy”. We have a right to know what kind of treat­ment for­eign guests could ex­pect when fly­ing here. Air­lines that refuse to re­spect our guests should not be al­lowed to op­er­ate in T&T.

Our ug­ly ex­pe­ri­ence with KLM was the cul­mi­na­tion of two months of nav­i­gat­ing a dense thick­et of red tape, over­seen by the most un­pro­fes­sion­al of staff, in or­der to pro­cure a vis­i­tor’s visa for my wife from Port-of-Spain. Nev­er have I been so ashamed to be a Trinida­di­an, hav­ing to ex­plain to my wife, why get­ting a vis­i­tor’s visa re­quired two months, three sep­a­rate vis­its to im­mi­gra­tion in Port-of-Spain, 14 doc­u­ments, de­liv­ered both elec­tron­i­cal­ly and by hand, all for a visa that was de­liv­ered two weeks late, with­out any apol­o­gy, by dis­or­gan­ised per­son­nel, evinc­ing a “don’t ask me any ques­tions” at­ti­tude, and who were in­dif­fer­ent to the tragi­com­i­cal im­age of Trinidad & To­ba­go that they were pro­ject­ing to the world.

It is not my in­ten­tion to im­pugn the en­tire Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of T&T, and I am cer­tain that there are good of­fi­cers in the di­vi­sion who are ded­i­cat­ed to pub­lic ser­vice. But the prob­lems can­not be de­nied. Worst of all, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers made it clear that my spouse would not be el­i­gi­ble for a mul­ti­ple en­try visa. Every time she wants to vis­it her in-laws, she must reap­ply. Yet Trin­bag­o­ni­ans do not need visas to vis­it Ugan­da. The ra­tio­nale for Port-of-Spain’s ex­clu­sion­ary, non-rec­i­p­ro­cal pol­i­cy is dif­fi­cult to fath­om. The up­shot is that many Africans trav­el­ing to T&T need at least two visas, one for our coun­try and an­oth­er al­low­ing them to tran­sit through the USA, UK, or Cana­da.

To avoid hav­ing to get a sec­ond visa, they must tran­sit through KLM’s Am­s­ter­dam hub where they are de­liv­ered in­to the clutch­es of the self-ap­point­ed troll of the transat­lantic bridge.

The im­pli­ca­tions of this fi­as­co are far-reach­ing. We can­not forge clos­er ties to the African con­ti­nent with­out the ex­change of peo­ple. I had planned to bring a con­tin­gent of ex­cit­ed Ugan­dans to Trinidad to ex­pe­ri­ence Car­ni­val. How­ev­er nei­ther I nor any­one else will do so if air­lines, tag-team with our gov­ern­ment, im­pose ar­bi­trary, bur­den­some, de­grad­ing, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, or ex­tra-le­gal bar­ri­ers to en­try in­to T&T.

Such poli­cies cause emo­tion­al dis­tress, in­flict fi­nan­cial costs on our vis­i­tors, and no Ugan­dan tourist would put up with them. I am ab­solute­ly cer­tain that KLM re­spects this po­si­tion, as none of the Dutch tourists who vis­it our shores would tol­er­ate them ei­ther.

KLM re­sponds

At­tor­neys for Richard Birch­wood wrote to KLM’s at­tor­neys out­lin­ing his com­plaint on Jan­u­ary 29, 2024. KLM’s at­tor­neys re­spond­ed as out­lined be­low

Dear Sir,

Re: Re­ply to de­mand no­tice cum no­tice of in­ten­tion to sue--Biti­ju­ma Lube­ga Na­mugambe

We write to you for and on be­half of KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­lines (heri­nafter re­ferred to as ‘our client) up­on whose in­struc­tions we ad­dress you here­un­der.

We are in re­ceipt of your de­mand let­ter dat­ed Jan­u­ary 29, 2024, and we re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly.

Our client has a du­ty to con­firm that all pas­sen­gers have valid trav­el doc­u­ments, such as pass­ports and visas and meet the en­try re­quire­ments of the des­ti­na­tion coun­try be­fore board­ing, to fa­cil­i­tate law­ful bor­der cross­ing.

An air­line may be held re­spon­si­ble by the im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties in the event a pas­sen­ger car­ried by the air­line is re­fused en­try at the bor­der due to an un­jus­ti­fied pur­pose and/or con­di­tions of in­tend­ed stay and/or in­cor­rect trav­el doc­u­ments.

Up­on this back­ground, our client may refuse to board a pas­sen­ger on a flight in ac­cor­dance with Ar­ti­cle 9 para­graphs (a), (f) or (k) of the Gen­er­al Con­di­tions of Car­riage.

Our client, in the cir­cum­stances, was jus­ti­fied to de­ny the board­ing of your client ac­cord­ing to Ar­ti­cle 9(f) of the Gen­er­al Con­di­tions of Car­riage due to re­fer­ral by im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties.

In the event your client is in­ter­est­ed in seek­ing a re­fund of the tick­et price, please do not hes­ti­tate to con­tact our client’s tick­et is­su­ing of­fice.

We hope this puts the mat­ter in­to prop­er per­spec­tive.

Yours faith­ful­ly