There were 3 officers for 5 flights taking off around the same time. And on top of that the Swiss officer was slow and asked my wife and me separately for our B-Permit and said it could be a problem while coming back to Basel by the French border control. He didn’t even bother looking at our passports before asking this twice. We are EU citizens (and brown). Racism much? Luckily the gates were open till a few minutes before takeoff and everyone made it. Why is Basel airport so badly managed by three advanced countries? What are our airport taxes for tickets going for?

7 comments

  1. Basel Airport/Euroairport is a very special case, since it’s a Swiss Airport on French ground with shared Geman use (Freiburg). While Germany and Framce are EU, Switzerland is not. Hence some specialties apply.

    The airport has two exits. One for France one for Switzerland. If you show up with Swiss papers (as in Ausländerausweis B) to the French exit, they will not accept them and be a pain in the ass for hours if they feel like it.

    It seems like the action by the border guard was misunderstood and not ment as racism, since all he tried to do is inform you and warn you about this situation. Obviously it seem to have been lost in translation.

    Please be reasonable. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity/ignorance.

    – Hanlon’s razor

    this goes for racism too.

    Have a good one

  2. this thing is an automated passport checker for french people, you scan your passport, it adds it up in a database, next time you’ll only have to look at it and it will recognise you from the database.

    that’s how I remember it from when I talked to someone about it, so may be wrong here and there.

  6. Its a Paraphe in a french airport, it’s like the Icecream machine in a Mc Donalds.

    (though several years ago, i used those frequently in Orly and Marignane and they were in perfect working order. I miss that smug feeling of not having to queue.)

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