Stephen Jackson was expecting to spend the weekend playing golf in Spain. Along with three friends, the 66-year-old retired aeronautical engineer from Preston travelled to Manchester airport in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The four were booked on the 6.20am easyJet flight, which was due to touch down at Alicante airport around 10am – in good time for a round of golf.
Mr Jackson has a passport valid for travel out to Spain and the rest of the European Union until 10 December 2024 for a stay of up to 90 days.
But ground staff working for easyJet insisted it was not valid and turned him away.
Mr Jackson said: “When we arrived at the airport we self-checked in our golf bags and attached the baggage label.
“When going to the bag drop-off point an easyJet employee asked to see my passport which I did.
“She then informed me that my passport was invalid, saying ‘The expiry date is now 10 years from the issue date and that there was less than three months from that on my return home’.”
Since Brexit, UK passports must meet two conditions for travel to the European Union:
Mr Jackson’s passport comfortably met both these conditions.
EasyJet, along with Ryanair and the UK government, wrongly combined these conditions for many months until they agreed to apply the actual rules as imposed by Brussels and notified to them by The Independent three years ago. But mistakes are evidently continuing.
At Manchester, Mr Jackson showed the ground staff member the Foreign Office passport guidelines from the UK government website.
“She said that I was incorrect and I could not board,” he said. “I had the same conversation with a supervisor and the same result. Realising I could not win, I set off home by train, leaving the other three to go to Spain.”
When Mr Jackson alerted The Independent, easyJet swiftly investigated and apologised.
A spokesperson said: “We are very sorry that Mr Jackson was incorrectly denied boarding on his flight from Manchester to Alicante.
“This was due to a misunderstanding at the gate of the passport validity rules for travel to Spain and we are following up with our ground handling agent in Manchester to ensure this doesn’t happen in future.
“We are in touch with Mr Jackson to apologise for the error and to reimburse him in full or provide an alternative flight, settle his expenses and process his compensation.”
Mr Jackson is due £350 in denied boarding compensation. He said: “I am usually a chilled-out guy but during my experience at the airport I was so angry I was shaking – especially as I knew I was right after checking my passport validity.
“The easyJet attitude was so crap: ‘They are right, you are wrong, so toddle off and leave’.
“It was so humiliating to leave my friends and trot off to the train station.”
EasyJet says it is investigating to see if other passengers have been wrongly denied boarding by the ground staff involved in Mr Jackson’s case.
Last month British Airways ground staff at London Gatwick scuppered a Spanish golfing break for David Muir from Oxford in a similar fashion.
He had a passport valid for travel to the European Union, but a series of airline representatives repeatedly claimed it had expired. Also at Gatwick on the same day, BA wrongly denied boarding to a Florida-bound passenger, Kathleen Matheson, inventing a rule that the US requires six months on British passports. There is no minimum validity requirement for the US.
The airline later apologised for both cases.
