Air Canada fined for flouting Swiss rules

Air Canada has lost a court appeal against a CHF144,000 fine for transporting nine passengers to Zurich without valid Swiss entry documents.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Air Canada has been sanctioned several times by the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) since 2015 for transporting people to Switzerland who lacked the necessary “Inadmissible Passengers” (INADs) travel documents.

While the first violation resulted in a warning, the SEM has subsequently imposed fines of CHF4,000 per passenger on several occasions.

In 2018, Air Canada transported 14 who displayed suicide risk. Due to the repeated offenses, a penalty of CHF16,000 per person was imposed, totaling CHF224,000. This decision was not appealed.

However, the airline ultimately filed an appeal against the SEM penalty of CHF144,000 for nine suicide risk individuals in the first half of 2019.

Air Canada pointed to its efforts to raise awareness among its staff and emphasised that the rate of suspected or confirmed suicides was 0.01 per passenger.

The Federal Administrative Court ruled that this rate is only one of several criteria for assessing the quality of security checks.

In this case, Air Canada failed to provide evidence of a flawless security system. For example, the airline failed to demonstrate any follow-up on problematic cases that would have required a debriefing with the employees involved.

This judgment is not yet legally binding and can be appealed to the Federal Supreme Court.

Translated from German by AI/mga