Turkish Airlines has suspended ticket sales from Russia to Mexico until the end of July

Turkish Airlines has invited travel agents to cancel tickets for flights from Russia to Mexico, the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) reported on April 24. In addition to processing a refund, passengers can change the route and date of the flight.

The offer applies to tickets for transit flights from Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan to Mexico City and Cancun, issued before April 23, 2024. All of them had to be carried out with a transfer in Istanbul.

As ATOR clarifies, tickets purchased before April 23, 2024 (and valid from April 23 to July 31, 2024) can be exchanged for other dates or destinations.

“For unused tickets, an involuntary refund without penalty is provided, provided the transaction is completed before July 31, 2024 (inclusive),” the association added

Earlier, ATOR reported that Turkish Airlines had stopped selling single tickets from Russia to Mexico in transit through Turkey. At the same time, you can still purchase separate tickets to Turkey and Mexico, as well as to other Latin American countries, on the airline’s website.

When you try to find a ticket for a flight from Russia to Mexico, a pop-up message appears on the Turkish Airlines website: “We do not have a single flight for the date and route you selected, or all our tickets have been sold out. Change the date and/or route for a new flight search.”

In April, Russians began to report on social networks that even though they had a ticket, they were not allowed on a Turkish Airlines transit flight from Istanbul to Latin American countries. Among the states to which Russian citizens are prohibited from flying are Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Panama and others, Interfax notes.

The Shot telegram channel wrote on April 21 that a Russian named Gleb, who was flying from St. Petersburg to Cancun with a transfer in Istanbul, was not allowed on board Turkish Airlines. He planned to go to Madonna’s concert in Mexico. Shot’s interlocutor said that he was denied boarding the plane with the words “Oh, another Russian passport!” He added that several other passengers were turned away because of “little travel history,” and a tourist with multiple passports and numerous Schengen stamps was allegedly told: “Mexico is not waiting for you.”

After being denied boarding on a flight to Cancun, Gleb contacted the Turkish Airlines office, but they refused to resolve the problem with returning to Russia and offered him to pay for the ticket himself for $600 (about 56 thousand rubles).

In total, the number of Russians who have not been allowed into Latin America from Istanbul in recent months has reached 1,000 people, writes Shot. The same data is provided by the telegram channel “Roof of TurDom”. “The underlying reason, according to experts, is that the airline is afraid that tourists will turn out to be migrants and use Mexico as a transit point to get to the United States,” the channel notes.

On April 21, Russian diplomats turned to the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the management of Turkish Airlines with a request to explain the reasons for the problems that arose during the transit of Russians to Latin American countries through Istanbul airport. The Standing Commission of the Presidential Human Rights Council on International Cooperation, in turn, addressed the Turkish Ambassador to Russia Tanju Bilgic.

Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov assured that the government and the Russian Foreign Ministry are working to resolve the situation with Turkish Airlines, “without waiting for contacts at the highest level.”

“The problem is mainly on the Turkish side. Here <...> our government is actively working, which tirelessly talks about the unacceptability of such a situation for us, for Russian citizens. Our embassy in Ankara is working,” the Kremlin representative emphasized and added that to resolve this situation, Russia will use “friendly relations with the Turkish side.”

Russians are trying to enter the United States through Mexico

In January 2023, the Russian embassy in Mexico admitted that the country’s authorities were increasingly denying entry to Russians and citizens of some other countries due to the growing flow of illegal migration to the United States. The head of the consular department of the Russian Embassy in Mexico, Andrei Troyanovsky, emphasized that there was no discrimination specifically towards Russians.

In March of the same year, the American border service released statistics according to which over the previous five months more than 25 thousand Russians entered the United States through the southern border with Mexico. The CBS television channel explained that Russians fly to Mexico, which can be reached with an electronic visa, and then cross the border illegally and apply for asylum in the United States.

According to the US Department of Justice, in the 2023 fiscal year (began October 1, 2022), the share of Russians granted asylum in the United States was 63%. This is the highest percentage of successful applications compared to other countries – for example, in the case of Venezuela it is 38%, with Mexico – 5%.

In the summer of 2023, Mexico’s ambassador to Moscow, Eduardo Villegas Mejias, argued that the country’s authorities did not impose any additional restrictions on Russians because they use it as transit to the United States.

“Mexico has neither officially nor unofficially changed its immigration policy. We apply the same controls [за приезжающими, что и раньше]”, the diplomat assured.