Bengaluru student denied boarding to Vancouver flight via Seattle for not having US Visa: Report

A 25-year-old Bengaluru woman was forced to shell out an additional ₹1.4 lakh at the last minute for a flight to Vancouver, Canada, after she was denied boarding to her original Qatar Airways flight - via a stop at Seattle - for not having a US transit visa. The incident occurred Wednesday at the city's Kempegowda International Airport (KIA).

The woman, identified as Simran, is a resident of Koramangala, and was traveling to Vancouver to attend college, where she had secured a seat in a reputable university, The Times of India reported.

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She had booked her Qatar Airways flight QR573 in early January for ₹77,000, which was scheduled to take off from Bengaluru on Wednesday. The flight would stop at Doha, where the woman would take a connecting flight to Seattle and then reach Vancouver.

Having no choice when the airline's ground crew stopped her from boarding, the woman cancelled the ticket and flew to Vancouver via London and Toronto on a British Airways flight the next day by paying for a fresh ticket, costing her ₹1.4 lakh. This route did not require her to have a transit visa.

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“I was extremely disappointed as when I was booking my ticket on the portal it didn't provide me any information regarding the US visa, else I would have done the needful,” the woman told the publication. The airline is processing a refund of her original ticket, the report added.