Boniface Mwangi Stranded In FRANCE Forcing His Children To Sleep On The Floor

Activist Boniface Mwangi is stranded at Paris airport since Wednesday because of a purported security protocol in France.

Boniface Mwangi who was travelling from New to Nairobi via Paris revealed that he has been stranded in France for more than 12 hours because the airline made a mistake in not offering the right assistance to its passengers.

He said :

“We left New York on Delta airline on Tuesday 2nd September via Paris with my family,an hour late since our flight was delayed. We found our connection flight to Kenya had already left. Air France gave us new tickets to Fly to Nairobi via Amsterdam.

Boniface Mwangi

We found ourselves detained for three hours by the border police in Paris while trying to get the connection via Amsterdam. My family didn’t have Schengen visas but the airline gave us the Amsterdam tickets anyway. Apparently we couldn’t transit without Schengen visa’s but the Air France ground crew never bothered to let us know that.

So three hours later in the border police unit (where I had to be escorted to use the toilet,which doesn’t lock) they gave us new boarding passes for a flight leaving tomorrow morning. We went to the Air France office after the police station ordeal with another Kenyan, Evelina Olago, who said they would offer us a hotel for the night, only to come back and inform us that the police said we couldn’t leave the airport.

To cut the long story short, we are spending the night at the airport. We arrived here 2nd September 10:15am and we shall depart 3rd September 1100hrs (24 hours later).

We are still stranded at the airport and now trying to find what to do with the kids sleeping at every bench and floor we stop at.

French police have refused to let the airline get us a hotel or so they claim. I went back to the border police base to ask about the denial and the officer l found couldn’t even look at me. The French police may justify they’re trying to keep out illegal immigrants but the lack of empathy,understanding and zero effort in listening to us hurts. We are stranded in France not because we want to but the airline made a mistake and we the paying passengers are suffering. What strikes me is that between all the requests, the shuttling back and forth, the airline’s (Flying Blue-Sky Team) involved didn’t admit we are in this transit mess because of them.”

Surely this is not right not because of anything else but because any passenger or a foreigner needs to be treated with empathy.