Ethiopian Airlines sued over visa blunder

Zimbabwean father Tendai Sibanda is demanding more than R3m in damages after Ethiopian Airlines blocked his underage son from boarding a flight from Johannesburg to Egypt, where he was supposed to play tennis as part of the Africa Junior Champions (AJC) competition. News24 reports that the airline said 17-year-old Mengezi Sibanda's visa was a fake. His flight to Cairo was due to connect through Addis Ababa from Johannesburg. However, an Ethiopian Airlines employee doubted the authenticity of the Egyptian visa on his passport at OR Tambo. Without checking with Egyptian authorities, he blocked Mengezi from boarding the flight. ‘The only assertion presented was that his visa to Egypt, on the face of it, likely appeared invalid, this without qualification or taking steps to test the veracity of the same,’ reads the summons Mabuza Stha Attorneys filed at the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg). Mengezi allegedly ‘suffered damages in that he lost the monetary value associated with travelling costs, accommodation costs, and participation in the AJC tournament, which cascaded to the fact that the preparatory work thereto for the tournament was thus consequently lost’. It is their case that if Mengezi had attended the tournament, he would have turned professional, and that Ethiopian Airlines blocked him from attaining this. Sibanda added that his son's performance had dropped because the incident caused him trauma and ‘mental anguish.’

Full News24 report