Do airlines verify the validity of visas electronically during check-in?

Question

My question is whether airlines check visas electronically at the check in.

Say a person wants to fly from Moscow, Russia to London, UK to claim an asylum. Since he doesn't have a visa to the UK, he forges a UK visa and sticks it on his passport. Let's say visa quality is 1=1 with original.

So when he tries to check in with the airlines for the London bound flight, we know that the airlines will check the visa visually. But do they check it electronically, or with UK border agency before the flight to confirm its authenticity?

I heard of something called "passenger manifest." Does it have anything to do with visa checks?

Edit, pasted in the details given as an answer:

• to the guy who is worried regarding criminal offence of forging a fake document, if asylum seeker can get to his destination, he/she is not prosecuted for forging a travel document considering they would not be able to gain genuine ones in their country where their life is threatened. 1951 UN Refugee Convention: Section 51.
• I asked the same question on Quora (also a forum) where a guy who claimed to have good knowledge of this system said, the airlines send the list of boarding passengers to UK and border agency confirms the list, marking the ones who are not allowed to board, those on no fly list or with invalid (forged) visas. Then the airline can deny you boarding right at the airplane gate when they check for your passport one last time. He also mentioned, this system was in place specifically to stop refugees flying into the country easily... Oh man.

But, obviously it would be GREAT if someone who actually works/worked at airline companies doing the boarding checks answer with full certainty. Please tag those if you know any with such credentials.

Answer 1

The answer to the specific question is NO. The airline does not check the Visa electronically.

However, Immigration at the destination can check Visa validity during APIS processing. Whether or not they actually do is something they will not confirm for 'security' reasons.

I want to be vary clear about this (downvote threat). The airline may not even collect Visa information, just verify visually, but must submit a valid primary travel doc, usually a Passport. The receiving Agency can then do a validation internally if they choose to. Again, whether or not they do is something they will not say.

The airlines can collect and transmit Visa specific information.

US CPB can process a Visa number as a secondary doc but it is not required for submission. It may be effectively required for someone who would be denied travel otherwise.

Answer 2

Airlines would have neither the possibilities nor the knowledge to actually check visas individually for validity. Visas, being official documents attached into another official document, have a variety of security features only a few of which are made public. Some may require special instruments to be verified. An airline cannot reasonably be required to check for all possible security features and — most importantly — they are not going to gain access to the confidential government lists of who got issued which visa for which duration.

If you manage to forge a visa in very good quality, capturing all the known and semi-known security features, the airline will probably let you board because they canont distinguish it from a real one. Immigration at your destination, however, may have kept a list of people who were issued visas and if your name is not on the list you’re probably in for forgery. Furthermore, arriving immigration will likely have some of the more sophisticated security-validating instruments at their desks.

Airlines are required to make sure that the documents presented pass a basic sanity test and that they would — assuming them to be valid — allow for entry into the destination country. Transporting someone who does not have valid-looking documents can cost them an unpleasant fine they want to avoid.

Finally note that it may be beneficial to have a chat with a lawyer before attempting the strategy. As I mentioned before, forging an official document (including a visa) is punishable in most countries. While there may be special circumstances allowing asylum seekers to not be prosecuted for it, I would hope to be on the safe side before leaving. Nothing worse than having to rely on a country’s goodwill after showing that country how well one is able to forge their documents.