Scandinavian Airlines Tried To Deny My Friend Boarding, Ignore Rules

Ford was almost denied boarding at the Miami airport when he went home from a trip to Oman on a more direct and comfortable route.

I understand travel restrictions are complicated, but I would expect an airline to do better.

Why SAS claimed my friend couldn’t fly to the United States

While we were checking in for our SAS flight at the airport, we were asked a lot of standard questions, like whether we packed our own bags, if anyone asked us to take anything for them, etc.

There were questions about whether we had been in any countries in Southern Africa in the past 14 days. My friend is not an American and was in South Africa a week ago.

He was told he wouldn't be able to take the flight due to the US travel ban. The US had a travel ban on South Africa for a short time in late 2021, but it was lifted on December 31, 2021.

We showed the check-in agent the official White House statement that the ban was over, and we also showed him the IATA Timatic page, which says no such requirement exists.

At this point the check-in agent turned around and showed us the document he was reading. He wasn't lying when he said that if a non-American answered "yes" to any of the questions, it was a PDF from the airline.

He stated that the document is constantly updated. He explained that there was nothing he could do, but that the documents team would arrive at the airport in around 30 minutes and make a decision about the situation.

Surely the “documents team” will fix this!

I don't know what the documents team is, but I figured they'd set this agent straight. They probably have one job, which is to understand documents.

My friend was called back to the check-in counter after an extended wait. He was told by the agent that he had spoken with the documents team. They were going to make a one time exception for him, but they urged him to not show his passport to US authorities that contained his stamp from South Africa. They were encouraging him to violate travel restrictions and hide his travels from the US government.

I feel like I need to write about this because it's ridiculous to me.

• It’s one thing if the staff acknowledged a mistake was made, which would be totally fair
• But instead they just made a “one time exception,” which makes me believe that absolutely nothing will be done to fix this, and it also makes me wonder how many people have been incorrectly denied boarding by SAS
• The fact that SAS is trying to enforce rules that haven’t been in effect for two months is kind of concerning, especially if the airline allegedly has a “documents team”

How are people supposed to make sense of things if a global airline can't even update travel restrictions two months after they're dropped?

Bottom line

A global airline tried to deny my friend boarding based on travel restrictions that haven't been in place for two months. I find it troubling that this was an official SAS document, and that no matter how much proof was presented to the contrary, the airline insisted he wasn't allowed to travel.

The airline suggested that he hide his travel history from the US government by not showing his passport with the South African stamp.

I am not blaming the frontline employee who was trying to enforce the guidance given by the company. I'm blaming whoever told staff to enforce these travel restrictions that no longer exist.

What do you think about this situation? How would you handle this?