Trouble at airline check-in counters
In 1993, when I was seconded by a German Government owned institution to work on international agricultural research in Southeast Asia, I had an “Official Passport” from then German government. This came with great benefits, but also with some restrictions. The US trade embargo targeting Vietnam, for example, was still in place and as obedient “little brothers” of the Gringos we Germans had to comply. I was not allowed to travel to Vietnam in official function, not even to look at how to improve poor smallholder farmer’s livelihoods. With the help of two Vietnamese colleagues I managed to get clearance and a visa from Vietnam, left my official passport at home, and did a first trip to the country, and with my Vietnamese friends managed to establish a working relationship that lasted more than 25 years and benefitted a lot of Vietnamese rice farmers and also small farmers in other Asian countries from technology transfer from Vietnam. The benefits of the cooperation was worth the trouble of getting permissions and working out semi illegal administrative detours.
Bill Clinton lifted the trade embargo on February 3, 1994, so after that I was free to go. Restrictions were still in place in Vietnam. I remember spending several hours at the customs in Ho Chi Minh City trying to explain what an Apple Newton was, back then unknown to the Vietnamese. Frustratedly, after being questioned for hours, I opened up the calculator application, added 25 to 100, showed them the display and said “It is a calculator”. After which they cleared me.
Also my counterparts in Vietnam did a lot of work in the background to get permissions. Which they still do, and we are not even aware of that because they shield us from it. But things became much easier in the following years.
Other experiences of difficulties I had in Myanmar, where I also started working around 2004. It was extremely difficult to get a visa and only thanks to our fantastic office coordinator in Yangoon I was able to travel there in the following years, until paranoia about the influence of foreigners subsided somehow.
Otherwise, from the late 1990s until COVID it was heaven for international travel. Just buy a ticket and hop on a plane. Having one of the most powerful passports definitely helped. Visa requirements eased over the hears and visas were either waived or could be applied for on arrival. It was easy. In 29 years working in Asia I had missed only one flight. And that was my fault (and the Americans) because I had mixed up am and pm (which pitifully disturbed mind had designed the am/pm scheme in the first place?).
Things started to get difficult again with COVID. We had to study so many country specific guidelines. And airlines reduced staff so you did not get the assistance needed. Airline offices with humans closed down and we had to start helplines where you had to listen to elevator music for hours before you reached an assistant. Now often you have to deal with a chatbot for a long time not understanding your problem before you finally get transferred to a human.
- When COVID started my wife did not get on an SQ plane to Germany and we had to live separate lives for 3/4 of a year because she had only a Schengen visa (tourist visa), and airline staff in Manila said tourism is not allowed, despite her being family.
- My daughter was not allowed on a KLM flight from Stuttgart to Manila despite having all required documents, because of an ignorant/idiotic check in lady from the KLM ground crew who did not know the rules and lied to us.
- I almost got stuck in quarantine in Taiwan because ground staff of Cathey Pacific interpreted guidelines of the Philippines wrongly. Only after I suggested to sign a waiver saying that I cover all cost in case I would not let into the Philippines i was allowed to board in the last minute and could avoid 2 weeks in a quarantine center in Hong Kong.
It was just a shit show and one felt totally powerless on top of the financial losses from re-booking and loss of income during delays.
COVID is over. But with ultra nationalism on the rise and people voting radical right politicians into power things are not getting better. The combination of ultra right policies, getting rid of support people and replacing them with algorithms, and the surveillance measures introduced during and justified by COVID are here to stay.
After a business trip in Bihar, India, the immigration officer at the airport asked me on the way out: “Where were you staying at the night of <date>?” I did not remember since my counterparts had arranged for the trip and dropped me at hotels in the evenings and picked me up the next morning. No need to memorize all the hotel names. So I guessed, recalling a random hotel name from the trip that I rembered. “No Sir, that was the night before when you stayed there.” He responded pointing at his computer screen. He had my whole travel itinerary on his computer. So all hotels, except for the one in question, must have reported my stays to Indian immigration. I remembered that in the hotel in question the receptionist had knocked at my room several times at night and asked for more information. I had assumed it was a similar scheme as in China in the 1990s when girls would knock at your hotel room door and asked whether you could help them “practice their English”, and gave her very quick answers to get rid of her. So she must have screwed up my data. But that is beyond the point. The point is- total surveillance happening everywhere, with the potential of screw ups when an algorithm come to the wrong conclusion .
And just in the last four weeks:
- In Fiji my daughter and I got rejected to board a Qantas flight from Fiji to Sydney with connecting flight to Manila because of ridiculous Australian Government regulations regarding an overnight transfer on Sydney airport.
- In Manila I was almost not let on a plane to Jakarta because the PAL ground staff did not know about the Indonesian visa on arrival. According ton them, they had “all the information about visa requirements” on their computer, which they had not. I looked up the Indonesian Immigration Office home page and showed them the Visa on Arrival info.
Nowadays you need to quadruple-check everything and even then you are not assured whether you can go. And you still don’t know whether they will let you on the plane.
I am afraid with further integration of databases (with often incorrect information) and reliance on algorithms it is going to get worse, not better.