Oksana Korolova and Leonid Korolev are Ukrainian citizens with Canadian visas who were supposed to come to Canada on an Air Transat flight on Monday from Athens to Toronto. Volunteers with Ukraine Help Middlesex, a grassroots group that helps sponsor and resettle Ukrainian refugees in London, Ont., had to pick them up from Pearson International Airport and then reunite the couple with their son, Max Korolova. who is already in London. However, his mother and father never left Athens on the Canadian airline. Instead, they were kicked off the flight by Air Transat agents who wouldn’t let them board because Korolev holds a Russian passport and doesn’t meet Canadian vaccination requirements against COVID-19.
“They won’t go on vacation”
“Air Transat made a mistake. If there had been a different service agent who knew the regulations a little better, they would have been allowed to fly,” Sanja Dammeier, a volunteer with the group Ukraine Help Middlesex, told CBC News on Tuesday. Air Transat says it is “deeply sorry” that a Ukrainian couple on Canadian visas were deported after airline agents denied them a flight to Canada. (Evan Mitsui/CBC) Dammeier is referring to a policy under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET), which provides Ukrainian citizens with a valid Canadian visa through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) an exemption from Canadian COVID-19 vaccine requirements 19 for international travelers. “They’re not tourists. They’re not going on vacation. They’re flying out of a war zone and then they’re being treated like this? It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible,” Dammeier said. “He has a Canadian visa to come to Canada. He is a Ukrainian citizen. He is allowed to come, but the airline staff screwed it up.” Rather than leave her husband behind, Korolova chose to stay with Korolev in Athens. Max Korolova said he spoke Tuesday morning with his parents, who do not speak English and were not denied access to a translator by Greek authorities who stopped them at the departure gate. At that point, Max said, Greek police deported them back to Istanbul, the city from which the couple had arrived.
Airline admits ‘mistake on our part’
“For them, it’s very disappointing because they were under bombing and almost on the front lines and they escaped the war and at the moment they were deported from Greece to Istanbul,” Max said. “They are in a hotel in Istanbul. They have some money for the hotel, but it is not a good hotel. It is an emergency hotel.” Max said that since his parents were deported on Monday, he has been taking walks to help cope with the stress and feeling of helplessness of knowing his parents are trapped in another country. On Tuesday, Air Transat apologized and said its agents made a mistake at the departure gate when they denied Korolev entry to the plane, which they had no right to do. “This situation was indeed an error on our part at the check-in counter,” Bernard Côté, Air Transat’s director of communications, wrote to CBC News in an email on Tuesday. “While Mr. Korolev presented us with a Russian passport, not exempting him from Canadian vaccination requirements, Ms. Korolova’s Ukrainian passport should have allowed the couple to board their flight as they are married. “We are deeply sorry for this situation and what Ms. Korolova and Mr. Korolev had to go through. We are working to quickly change their booking so they can land safely in Canada and contact their sponsors directly to arrange their travels.” Dammeier said Air Transat officials had contacted her group on Tuesday about arranging a new flight, and airline officials said they wanted to reroute the pair through Athens, which she said would not work. “Leonid cannot enter Greece for at least six months,” he said. “Now they are working to put them on a direct flight from Istanbul to Toronto” on Wednesday.
