Originally Posted by
strawberry Ribena
G4S are only used for American/Canadian flights.
That isn't accurate. They were used on my recent flight to Moscow and have also seen G4S agents at many non EU flights too.
This seems like an unfortunate mistake, but how it got as far as it did is beyond me. For one person to deny him is an accident, but presumably a supervisor would have stepped in at some stage and you'd expect them to know. Even if TIMATIC was used for an EU national traveling to EU, as poorly worded as it is, the truth would have been clearly stated in there somewhere.
It does make me wonder if the article is a bit lacking, though. Perhaps he had a British passport from the IOM or Channel Islands or an overseas territory. Those do not adhere to normal UK passport rules and could have caused the confusion?
As someone who used to be on the "front line", although not for BA, visa checking is a headache and being vigilant often led to mouthfuls of abuse as we very often had to deny people, although when we did so we were absolutely certain that person couldn't travel and the decisions to deny boarding on these grounds would almost always need at least 3 people to agree as to avoid this exact situation. If there was any doubt at all a call to the arrival countries immigration department was always made and if necessary copies of documents sent. They always had the final word.