- Ryanair made Dinesh Joseph take a test in Afrikaans when flying back from a vacation.
- The airline has said it is issuing the tests to guard against fraudulent South African passports.
- This is how Joseph completed the "callous and insensitive" test, as told to Insider's Urooba Jamal.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dinesh Joseph, a South African man living in the UK, about his experience of being required to undergo a language test as a prerequisite for a Ryanair flight to Britain. It has been edited for length and clarity.
On May 22, I was flying from Lanzarote to London Stansted. I was unable to check in online and told to go to the Ryanair customer-service desk. I went there and the employee handed me an Afrikaans test.
I said, "I'm sorry, the form's in the wrong language. Can you give it to me in English?" The Ryanair employee looked at me and said, verbatim, "No, this is your language." I said, "No, I speak English, I don't speak Afrikaans. We have 11 official national languages in South Africa. I want an English test, otherwise I can't complete it."
I asked to speak with the manager. Another Ryanair employee came and said, "I understand that you're upset, but these are Ryanair rules. If you don't fill it in and if you don't pass it, you're not getting on that plane."
It was very triggering. It was upsetting as a person of color from South Africa, forced to do something like this in a language that's not my own. I felt excluded, isolated, and discriminated against. There were more than 1,000 people in that airport, and I was the only person that Ryanair made take the test.
Ryanair says the company has a duty to ensure that my travel documents are correct. How on earth does a poorly printed general-knowledge test in another language prove that my passport is legitimate?
I thought I was being pranked because the quality of the form was so unprofessional
The test looked like something a teacher would print out for her second-grade class. There were no official logos or policy numbers on it.
I was very upset but tried to rationalize with them. I said, "Look, I'm going to use Google Translate because I need to get back to London." The test's questions included: "What currency do you use in South Africa? Who's the president? What is the highest mountain? What side of the road do you drive on?"
I got through the form and the employee took out a marking sheet to mark my answers.
The test is blatantly discriminatory
You don't need to be able to speak a particular language to be a resident of a country. In the UK, there are loads of people that can't speak English as a first language.
Not everybody in South Africa can speak Afrikaans. South Africa was under an apartheid government until 1994 and the language of that apartheid government was Afrikaans.
Ryanair is callous and insensitive to the fact that they may force somebody who went through a traumatic experience under the apartheid government to take this test before they can fly.
It's prejudicial to an entire nation. They've basically said, "We don't trust you guys. We don't trust your passport. We don't trust that you've got the visas."
They're not even able to issue an apology or acknowledge that they potentially need to review their test.
The test does not prove if I'm South African
If you want to verify somebody's identity, there's a much more rigorous and thorough process involved. They could have asked to see my British-residence card, my Schengen visa, or my bank statements.
I launched a formal complaint and only received an automated response to say that Ryanair had received my complaint.
Somebody needs to be held accountable for this.
When asked to respond to Joseph's description of his experience, a Ryanair spokesperson told Insider in a statement there had been "substantially increased cases of fraudulent South African passports being used to enter the UK." It said the "simple questionnaire in the Afrikaans language" is used "to minimize the risk of fake passport usage."
"If they are unable to complete this questionnaire, they will be refused travel and issued with a full refund instead," the spokesperson said.
"Airlines operating to the UK face Home Office fines of £2,000 per passenger for anyone who travel illegally to the UK on a fraudulent passport or visa. This is why Ryanair must ensure that all passengers, especially South African citizens, travel on a valid South African passport or visa."