Ang737

Qantas was slapped with almost $10 million in fines during the past two years for breaching immigration laws.

Citizenship Minister Gary Hardgrave said Qantas received 915 infringements last financial year and 996 infringements in 2001-02, with each breach costing the airline $5,000.

The 1,911 breaches resulted in $9.5 million in fines for Qantas.
Singapore Airlines recorded 323 infringements last year, the American-based United Airlines had 217, down from 437 the previous year, and British Airways copped 154 fines, down from 261.

"The penalty against each airline was $A5,000 per infringement," Mr Hardgrave said in an answer to a question taken on notice.

He said during the past two financial years there had been no prosecutions launched against airlines by the Immigration Department.

"In 2002-03, 2,354 infringement notices were imposed in lieu of prosecution," Mr Hardgrave said.
"In 2001-02, this figure was 3,211."

Mr Hardgrave said the majority of unauthorised air arrivals were removed from Australia within 72 hours.
The Flying Kangaroo last month announced a net profit of $357.8 million for the six months to December 31, 2003.


Safe Flying
Ang

Airspeed Ambassador

So let me get this right....The goverment fines an airline that brings in unauthorised persons to this country?

What is the government trying to achieve? (other than raise one hell of a lot of revenue).

Is this how other countries operate?

Capt Fathom

When you check in, it is the airlines' responsibility to check your passport and ensure you have the appropriate visas. It looks like a few slipped past!

Animalclub

Airspeed A.

Yes indeed and the fine is a lot higher.

Don Esson

The airlines are almost innocent third parties to this nonsense as the fault really rests with the handling companies who check-in the SLF. Handling Agents, such as SATS in Singapore, Cathay in Hong kong, Air NZ in NZ and son on operate on an all care, no responsibility basis with the sad result being the carrying airlines have to wear the fines and odium of wrong doing when it is really due almost solely to carelessness of check in staff. Where off-shore does the Rat do its own handling? Although Qantas earned the most infringements, they probaly caused least because they don't do any of their O/S check-ins. It's really pretty rough justice.

Animalclub

From experience - you'll find that quite a number of airlines employ their own check-in staff at airports outside of their home countries and employ local ground handlers to do the rest. This is an attempt to stop people travelling without the required paperwork.

Believe me the staff member who checks in a passenger with non-conforming paperwork is for a very high jump.

Lead Balloon

Checking the validity of a person's eligibility to enter Australia now is almost impossible to do by looking at the passport. The old printed visa that the Government used to issue, has been replaced by an Electronic Travle Authority (electronic visa if you like), that is tied to the individuals passport number. As visual check will tell you nothing. Its all to do with the ability of the check-in staff to process these passport numbers through the SITA network at the CUTE2 enabled leased check-in desks. Installation of passport readers at the check in may alleviate most of their mis-keying issues. $10M would have bought them 3 times their international requirement for these devices.

Of course the main reason for getting the hard-copy visa out of the passport was that it was discouraging tourism and Australia was recieving tit-for-tat responses from some Governments, including the USA and France. It was a really neat trick to make it all electronic and tie it to the MRZ of the passport - however, the flip side is the lack of anything humanly readable.

The airlines are fined the equivalent of the cost it takes to fly any illegals back + admin costs. Totally reasonable - if you can get away with it.