shoaibahmed

Hi All,

I was traveling to Dubai from London Heathrow. I am a British National. I was refused to board, the airline had to call UAE once they spoke to someone they came back and told me that I wasn't allowed to board or fly to UAE. They have asked me to go to the UAE embassy in London.

Has anyone had this before, is this something to do with a security clearance?

Thanks,
Shoaib

Rete

Do you hold citizenship in another country as well. Or perhaps did and renounced it? Is your name (which might be common) on a no fly list?

shoaibahmed

Just a UK Citezen. I’ve travelled to Europe no problems.

Dubaiexile

You can do a Freedom Of Information request to find out exactly why you were refused boarding with the Airline.

NABman

Not sure if this is entirely relevant to your situation. I have Egyptian and South African colleagues who hold GCC residency in Bahrain and KSA. Theoretically based on GCC residency entry on arrival to Dubai as with other nationalities would be possible. These guys need to have a visa which is issued after a CID check.

So as previously mentioned, maybe your name is a common one that might be on a list somewhere and needs to be checked.

A visit to the embassy might be faster than a FOI check with the airline.

Edo

If you did nothing wrong then you should file a complaint with EU's Air Passenger Rights asap.

More details in this link.

tooboocoo

I'm not sure that's relevant, since the UAE isn't in the EU. The airline presumably has to respect the rulings of the destination country - imagine the potential litigation by the OP if they flew him to an entry refusal (or worse) at Immigration in Dubai.

Edo

If you click on the links you'll see the rights of passengers departing from/to an EU airport - regardless of the origination and destination points of their travel.

farooq12

Best of option to go and check the embassy or rightly pointed out to use the rights to info act.

UKMS

gottheTshirt

I don't see the relevance to this link. It deals with rights of passangers denied from boarding due to faults by the airline. In this case the passenger has been denied boarding because he will be denied entry into the UAE. The airline will then have the responsibility of returning him to the UK (assuming he does not get arrested on arrival). It is in the passengers interest to be denied boarding.

scot47

If denied entry or if a visa is blocked, country taking that action has no duty to tell you why

Edo

His question was about denied boarding. Two different things. So if an airline issues you a ticket and then denies you boarding then they do have certain obligations under the EU law.

UKMS

Pulaski

You are correct, but I think he meant "Subject Access Request" under the Data Protection Act, which applies to any organization that holds your personal data - meaning anything that can be linked directly to you personally. In this case the airline has a name and other records, at least sufficient to match it to a passport when the passenger arrives at the airport, and in this case, apparently some derogatory information which means he wasn't allowed to board the aircraft.

That said, I suspect that the information the airline actually has is only that the destination country has said that he won't be admitted into the country.