UK TRANSIT VISAS — SCHENGEN CONFUSION

Last year, you answered a question for a couple who were travelling to Sweden. They both had Schengen visas, valid until 2020, in their new SA passports and wondered if they needed transit visas. Your answer was that they did not. However, the TWOV (Transit Without Visa) on the Iata (International Air Transport Association) Travel Centre website (iatatravelcentre.com) says SA nationals transiting through London Heathrow, London Gatwick or Manchester — with a confirmed onward ticket for a flight to a third country on the same calendar day — must have a visa issued by Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the US, stay in the international transit area of the airport, and have documents required for the next destination. Which effectively excludes transit-visa exemption when travelling to Schengen-visa countries — or doesn’t it? —

Leon Claasen

Ichecked the gov.uk website again and went through the process of seeing whether or not I needed a Direct Airside Transit visa and the answer is very clearly no. The website states that if you hold a Schengen Approved Destination Scheme (ADS) group tourism visa where the holder is travelling to the Schengen country that issued the visa, you do not require a transit visa for the UK. I would defer to the UK website over Iata, as they’re the immigration authorities in this case.

The Iata site does not mention the Schengen-area countries at all, which is a crucial omission. I will seek clarity from the

UK authorities to — hopefully — clear up the confusion for good.