Irish airline forces language test on Greek citizen

12 March 2012

Greece, it seems, has a long way to go to patch up its crumpled image as Europe (and beyond) remains sceptical about the country and its overall state.

The latest in a growing list of incidents took place in Barcelona recently. As reported in Monday's edition of the Irish Times, Dr Chryssa Dislis, a telecoms manager who lives with her family in Cork, was not allowed to board an Aer Lingus flight heading back to Ireland, unless she submitted to a language test in both Greek and English.

According to the company’s handling agents, such a test was necessary in order to establish that she was Greek, being that “many people from Greece, travel with false papers”.

When Dislis tried to argue that a fluency in either language was not required to hold a passport, the Aer Lingus staff had her luggage – and that of her husband and ten-year-old daughter – removed from the flight to Ireland.

Upon accepting that she had no other choice but to complete the forms, she asked the Aer Lingus staff for a copy of the forms, but was refused on the grounds that they were internal documents. A tense argument ensued, as Dislis’ husband tried to photograph the documents as proof and eventually required the intervention of police and airport security to end the disagreement.

“A very polite and calm policewoman arrived, who told them to put our luggage back on the flight and check us in,” Dr Dislis told the Irish Times.

“She asked us to delete a couple of the photos that showed staff members but, after a heated conversation with the manager, asked us if we would please delete the photos of the documents. We complied with the request and were checked in.

“All of this took place in full view of everyone in the queue. My daughter was deeply distressed and crying. I found the whole experience very disturbing.

“In the age of biometric passports, such illogical and discriminatory ‘tests’ are entirely unacceptable. I was only targeted because of my nationality and no serious attempt was made to check that I was indeed flying back home, where I came from only six days previously,” she said.

Her husband managed to retrieve the photographs from the camera and she transcribed the forms.

A complaint placed by Dislis with Aer Lingus raised a printed apology and a 200 euro voucher.

Speaking on Irish state broadcaster RTE on Monday morning, Dislis said the test was all the more "insane" as none of the Aer Lingus staff correct the completed test.

“It was some bright spark that must have thought of the idea. None of them spoke Greek. I gave the test and said, right, read it. “I could have written the Three Little Pigs. They couldn’t know,” she told the Morning Ireland Programme.

Dislis also said that the Greek embassy in Dublin told her that it had never heard of forged biometric Greek passports. Only a small number of forged old type police IDs had come to its attention.

(AthensNews)