Schengen
 

Think I know the answer to this but thought i'd blow off steam anyway.........

Did a flight today, UK-Italy-Switzerland-UK.

Plan is:- empty first leg, full load 2nd leg, drop half the pax in Swissland on quick turn and rest on to UK.

All goes well till we try and depart Switzerland where all pax are hauled off aircraft to go and have full immigration checks which then means full security checks even though they have all been through this leaving Italy. Co-Captain even got a dressing down from head borderman honcho when we tried to raise objections to the pointlessness of it all as we were not entering country. Hindsight says we were probably lucky not to have all the bags pulled off too and our lives made a real misery.....

The reason..........in a word Schengen :ugh:

Apart from the obvious point that UK is not a Schengen country, anyone got any other examples or constructive comments?????

I don't remember the exact words that Bill Bryson wrote in his book 'Neither Here nor There' but it was something along the lines of the Swiss national motto being 'Never trust anyone, ever, under any circumstances'.

.........................unless you have all their gold, works of art, antiquities.....

Robin Williams labels them:
"the nice germans"

I generally have had no troubles since Schengen applies to Switzerland and I only told them "coming from Germany" and that was that.

Have you asked them where you can read this special swiss regulation?

@flints: so they do thrust jews then?

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/...01:0032:EN:PDF


because they can ??? and/or have to ? Switzerland will be held responsible if some illegal practices were to be conducted.

HD.

Dunno about trust. More like the Incredible Hulk joke, "If I have a green ball in this hand and a green ball in the other hand............";)

CL300 cant open your link because a very slow and volume limited connection right now. However, I´m familiar with the fact that 'they' (Immigration and customs) can do random check whenever they like.

USUALLY they don´t do these on departing aircraft.

However, the reason here is not Schengen in switzerland, but the lack of Schengen in the UK, and the totally pigheaded approach british immigrations puts on the .... immigration.

However, has anyone seen that in a transiting Airliner? Unloading all bags etc?

and the saga continues............
 

Ok back again this week.

Arrive to be greeted by SAFA inspectors :rolleyes:

I go and pay bill in terminal so eye rolling all round by Immigration as we are coming/going to UK. I return to aircraft and cabin attendant asks if she should meet pax. Great Idea, smart girl :D

She goes in and is given complete third degree as to why she even need set foot in the hallowed land that is Swiss, is delayed by 15 mins and just about gets to meet pax in time. Next the attendance of the freelance FO is demanded who is delayed even more because he doesn't have company ID, and he didn't actually want to get off the aircraft let alone go to the terminal!!!!

So I guess the $64K question is this:-

Does any one know if immigration have absolute jurisdiction/authority in demanding to see transitting crew/pax on the ramp who don't actually want to enter the country???

Sorry don´t know about the 64K Q...

This is really bizarre... I never wear company ID. Never really was asked for it.(except in Orly, but thats a different story)