Uh-Oh: Confusion And Delay At Transit Counter In Tunis Airport…
I’m live-blogging my SAS EuroBonus SkyTeam Milion Mile challenge this week. Click here for background and route information.
After arriving in Tunis from Paris, we proceeded to the airport transit counter to check in for our Saudia flights to Kuala Lumpur via Jeddah. But we were met with confusion and delay.
After stepping off of our Air France flight, we followed the signs for transit. Our flight to Saudi Arabia was now less than two hours away. We followed signs to turn left and walked up a ramp instead of downstairs to passport control.
Showing up at the transit counter, we found four people sitting behind a counter. Off to the left, there were some Pakistani guys waiting in what appeared to be a holding area.
I presented our passports and stated that we would be traveling on Saudia.
You should have seen the look on their face…utter confusion.
I suppose that they are quite used to having passengers connecting on Tunisair, the flag carrier, but not Saudia.
A woman took our passports and asked us where we were going.
To Kuala Lumpur via Jeddah.
She asked us to wait and a series of phone calls resulted, with two of her colleagues also getting involved.
Five minutes later, she put down the phone and asked me for proof of onward travel beyond Malaysia. I pulled out my KLM ticket and I think the fact that I only had a 90-minute transit in Kuala Lumpur confused her even more.
Then she asked for my onward ticket from Jakarta, which I also presented.
Ooh, are we going to play that game? I had six more tickets before getting back to Los Angeles…
She spoke some more to her colleagues, picked up the phone again, then handed the phone to her male colleague who proceeded to spend eight minutes on the phone, doing who knows what.
But finally, our boarding passes were presented. I asked if she could add our SAS EuroBonus numbers (I was unable to do so in advance on the Saudia website), but she could not (she did seem to try, though I am not sure she fully understood our request). She even took a photo of our SAS numbers and promised to send them to the Saudia counter to be manually inputted. I thanked her and she then directed us to the lounge.
Even though we had to walk through a metal detector, I set it off and was just waved through. No one bothered to look at the X-ray screen of our bags going through either.
It all worked out and we even had time to visit the lounge. I do not mean to overdramatize this, but I really wish I could speak Arabic because it took a 15-minute exchange and many, many phone calls before we had our boarding pass…I’m genuinely curious what the problem was beyond proof of onward travel.