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Court quashes Ryanair fine for bringing illegal immigrants to UK
Ryanair has won a High Court appeal against Home Office fines of £4,000 for flying two illegal immigrants to Edinburgh.
The judge ruled airline staff who checked the couple’s falsified Greek passports couldn’t have been expected to spot they were fakes.
Judge Damien Lochrane said even trained immigration officers found it hard to spot forgeries and ruled that Ryanair should not be fined for flying the two Albanians from Majorca to Edinburgh in May last year.
The couple had apparently passed through Spanish border police and Ryanair ground handling agents before their false documents were spotted by UK border force inspectors at Edinburgh Airport immigration control.
In court, the low-cost airline revealed it had paid out more than £400,000 last year for carrying 200 passengers with forged passports or invalid visas.
However, Ryanair said it did not plan to claim back any other fines. It told the court that it had brought this case because ‘the falsity’ of the passports would not have been ‘reasonably apparent’ to ground handling agents.
A spokesman said: "We welcome this County Court ruling which found that the Home Office had wrongly fined Ryanair £4,000 in this case. The £4,000 fine and legal costs have been reimbursed to Ryanair."
Other airlines are believed to have paid millions for failing to spot passengers’ travelling on forged documents since the fines were introduced in 1999. Under immigration law, airlines and cruise lines can be fined up to £2,000 for each passenger trying to enter the country without the correct documents.
However, the court heard that the Home Office had imposed fines in some cases but not in others, which the judge said was an ‘inconsistent approach’.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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