Ryanair drops Afrikaans questionnaire after criticism from South African government

Ryanair CEO Micheal O'Leary said the South African government's criticism of the Afrikaans questionnaire was "rubbish." File picture

Ryanair has dropped a pre-boarding requirement for South African passengers to complete a test in Afrikaans before travelling, the company's CEO Michael O'Leary has said.

The airline faced accusations of discrimination earlier this month for its use of the test for passengers travelling home to South Africa from Europe and Britain.

Mr O'Leary said the use of the questionnaire has ended as it "doesn't make any sense".

Ryanair had said the "simple questionnaire" was part of its ongoing efforts to tackle fraudulent South African passport holders.

Passengers who refused to complete the test or failed to answer the questions were not permitted to board Ryanair flights and were refunded the price of their ticket.

Last week, the South African government's Department of Home Affairs said it was "taken aback" by the airline's use of the test labelling it a "backward profiling system."

In South Africa, Afrikaans is the third-most spoken language after Zulu and Xhosa.

Although many South Africans learn the language at school, its use is often associated with the discriminatory and exclusionary policies of the Apartheid era.

Mr O'Leary responded by calling the South African government's criticism of the questionnaire "rubbish."

However, he did confirm that the airline was dropping the language test.

"The South African government have acknowledged that there's a problem with the vast number of false or fake South African passports," Mr O'Leary told a news conference in Brussels on Tuesday.

He said there had been a recent surge in false South African passports on a route between Turkey and Ireland.

"Our team issued a test in Afrikaans of 12 simple questions like what's the name of the mountain outside Pretoria? They have no difficulty completing that, but we didn't think it was appropriate either," he added.

"So we have ended the Afrikaans test because it doesn't make any sense."