On Jan 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th, many families travelling to various destinations in India were denied boarding at the boarding gates by the Document check agency Securitas authorised by Lufthansa stating that OCI card holders (under 20 years) didn’t carry their old passport. Lufthansa said it is Securitas to decide and Securitas says it’s Lufthansa’s decision making passengers run back and forth to their staffs.

All this without even an iota of empathy or care for the passengers.

• Not willing to listen to anything that the passengers said
• Not providing exactly which rule that is not met
• Not willing to provide anything in writing (even though Lufthansa states that passengers has right to ask for the reason for not allowing them to board the plane and they must give a written text)

After the gates were closed, the passengers were asked to talk to Lufthansa service. They

• listen to the passengers story and say they can’t help
• Say that some new rules was told to the airlines by Indian authorities two days back. But refuses to show what rules where they are published.
• Said Lufthansa gets hefty fines from India for every passenger they take without proper documentation.
• Refused to accept the rules and regulations written on any of the Indian embassy’s website
• They didn’t even agree when a representative from the Indian embassy in Frankfurt came in person to the airport and argued in favour of the affected passengers.
• After many hours even if in one counter they say, the passenger can be rebooked to next flight few agents discussed among themselves and went back on their decision. When passengers said they have all the documents and Indian government approved they can travel without the old passport, they asked to mail it to some email ids @ dlh.de .
• In one case the supervisors said yes, another agent informed the passenger that they can be rebooked. But again after discussing with their colleagues at other counters, the decision was rolled back by the agent. Said sorry we can’t do this.
• In some cases, passengers were asked to send the screenshot from OCI portal that their application to link new passport is complete and based on this they were rebooked.

So the document requirements kept changing throughout the day, back and forth on the decision to rebook passengers and absolutely no empathy or willingness to listen to the passengers and help them find a solution.

Now about the rules: