Are the Schengen "airport transit visa" even checked?

Question

I was reading about Schengen transit visas today, and in an answer I saw that Schengen requires some people to have an airport transit visa. This visa is apparently for entering the international transit area of airports located in Schengen, i.e. not entering the Schengen area, not crossing any border.

This means that to just get out of the plane that brought you there, you will need a visa. In the answer, it is mentioned that it is the duty of the airline that flew you there to check for this visa, that they risk a fine.

But, in fact, as far as I know, airline crew is not entitled to perform any police/border duty, is it? In many cases they check the passengers' passports to make sure passengers are allowed at their destination because airlines are supposed to carry the passengers back if passengers are not allowed (I vaguely remember reading about this), but I am not sure airlines are allowed to deny any passenger to board for lack of visa.

On top of that, there is no control directly at the exit of a plane in Schengen area, so if a passenger merely transits in the international area, it is not even possible to control this person was there.

So, is this airport transit visa rule actually enforced?

Answer 1

The purpose of requiring airport transit visas of certain nationalities is to prevent asylum seekers from traveling to the host country under the guise of transiting towards somewhere else. Once someone is physically present on the host country's sovereign soil (which includes an airport's international transit area) and lodges an application for asylum, the host country is obliged to house and feed the applicant while they process the application. Governments tend to find that distasteful, especially when in their experience many asylum applications are made by citizens of particular countries.

Thus, the enforcement: If someone without the required airport transit visa shows up and petitions for asylum instead of traveling onward, then the authorities will know that whatever airline he arrived on has been too lax in checking his visa before he boarded. The airline will then be fined.

This motivates airlines to check transit visa for everyone of the relevant nationalities.

It is true that if someone without a visa is let through by the airline and turns out to be honest and proceed to his final destination, the government will never know about that. But since the airline can't distinguish honest passengers from dishonest ones, they need to check everybody.

Answer 2

Airline staff can, will and in some cases must check that you have the right visas. They can and will prevent you boarding the plane if you do not have them. As you say the airline is responsible if they allow you to fly to destination for which you do not have a visa.

The likelihood is you will be denied boarding if you do not have the right visa. I know people who have been denied boarding under these circumstances.

Answer 3

Airlines can and do check whether people meet some basic requirements to enter their destination. Of course, they can't guarantee that someone will ultimately be let in (e.g. they don't know how the landing interview will go and have no access to the databases border guards have) but they do have to check that you at least have a passport and visa that look valid.

If your citizenship gives you the right to enter many countries visa-free, that check is completely transparent and you might have not noticed it but for less fortunate people it means they have to present a visa or some additional documentation for virtually every flight they take.

Now, airport transit visas are a special case. If you look at the list of countries whose citizens need an airport transit visa, e.g. in the Schengen area, you will see it mostly comprises troubled countries from where many people try to seek asylum in Europe. Those are also the countries whose applicants have the highest success rate (at least in some destination countries, there are huge, almost absurd, differences between European countries in this respect).

Dealing with a frivolous asylum application costs money but if it's obviously unfounded and the person comes from a safe country, she will usually be detained and removed relatively quickly, at least if she has a passport and is forced to lodge her application at the border. Consequently, people who have absolutely no shot at a refugee status usually don't try that (many many applications nowadays come neither from genuine refugees nor from people stuck at the border, but from people who entered legally and try to delay deportation by any means available - including hopeless asylum applications - after their status changed).

Therefore, what this requirement is designed to achieve is to prevent people with a genuine claim to asylum from reaching the territory of a country. Because once you are there, the right to see your application examined and, if you meet the criteria, to be allowed to stay in the country is an established principle in international law (“non-refoulement“) that European states mostly honour. But there is no obligation to assist the people who are stuck in their region of origin, so we had rather have as many of them stay there instead of getting an opportunity to apply for asylum.