At 7.15am on Thursday 5 June, Claire Hannington, 45, and three friends arrived at Gatwick airport. They were booked on a British Airways flight two hours later to Ibiza.
Ms Hannington, an interior designer from Hertfordshire, had verified in advance that her passport was valid.
But BA ground staff at the Sussex airport once again chose to invent their own rules on passport validity, and she was wrongly turned away.
“I was removed from the queue without time to process what was happening, ask questions or have the matter properly verified,” she told The Independent.
“I was overwhelmed and in tears. I trusted the BA staff as the experts in these matters. I was told, emphatically, that my only option was to go to the Passport Office, get a same-day passport and buy a brand new flight.
“I felt deeply guilty, wrongly believing the error might be mine and that I had jeopardised my friends’ holiday as well.”
Later that day, British Airways staff at London City airport confirmed Ms Hannington was entitled to travel on her existing passport. A flight was available that afternoon – but to board it she would have to pay an additional £780.
Ms Hannington instead paid £392 for an evening flight on BA from Gatwick. As her passport was valid, she proceeded through the airport without a problem and joined her friends later that night on the Spanish holiday island.
The post-Brexit rules on passport validity for the European Union took effect in 2021. Because there was some scope for misunderstanding, The Independent clarified them with Brussels and shared the rules with the leading UK airlines.
For a trip to anywhere in the EU (except Ireland), a British passport must meet two conditions:
- No more than 10 years old on the day of departure to the EU.
- At least three months remaining on the intended day of departure from the EU.
Ms Hannington’s passport, which The Independent has seen, met both stipulations, which are independent of each other.
Unfortunately, ground staff at airports working for a range of airlines – in particular easyJet – have created a condition of their own, wrongly insisting that UK passports “expire” after nine years and nine months.
While British Airways has followed the rules at its main base, London Heathrow, BA staff at Gatwick have wrongly turned away passengers in the past.
Ms Hannington said: “The decision to deny me boarding was made far too hastily, without taking the necessary time to triple-check the actual entry rules or passport validity.
“In that moment, I accepted what I was told as fact. But the decision was wrong. Nobody took the time to calmly go through the detail with me. Had someone done so, it would have been clear that my passport met all the requirements – and I would have boarded my flight.
“Instead, I was left humiliated, crying, and trying to navigate a way forward on my own.”
Following the recommendation of BA staff, Ms Hannington caught a train to London to go to the Passport Office. But during the journey to the east London location, she received confirmation that her document was valid. So she went to nearby London City airport in the hope that British Airways would allow her to travel on the afternoon flight to the Spanish island.
BA staff at the Docklands airport told her that although she was fully documented, she could not travel without paying nearly £800. They had been told by colleagues at Gatwick that Ms Hannington had missed the flight, which was false: at the time the airline’s deadline for check-in expired, she was already speeding away from the airport by train to try to obtain another passport, as British Airways staff had advised.
After having paid £1,250 for a package holiday, Ms Hannington spent a further £392 for the last seat on the evening’s Gatwick-Ibiza flight.
At the end of her unexpectedly short holiday, she contacted British Airways – expecting to be promptly reimbursed and compensated for denial of boarding as the law demands.
Yet for many weeks BA failed to respond adequately. After almost three months, The Independent became involved. The airline then contacted Ms Hannington, but doubled down and blamed her once again for turning up late at check-in.
British Airways customer service staff told her in a letter: “The airport records show that you arrived after the check-in deadline for flight BA2680. Regrettably, this means I am unable to accept liability on behalf of British Airways for the denied boarding.”
She was offered a refund for the extra ticket she had bought, but the airline made clear in the letter “this offer does not represent an admission of liability”.
The Independent believes Ms Hannington is entitled to reimbursement of all the extra costs she incurred, as well as £220 in denied-boarding compensation. She is also likely to have a claim against the package trip subsidiary of BA, British Airways Holidays, for the loss of part of her trip.
Ms Hannington said: "After 12 weeks of chasing, I’m left deeply disheartened that BA still refuses to own their mistake. A flight refund doesn’t even begin to cover the extra travel, a day’s lost holiday, and the stress I endured, for nothing.
“Most troubling of all, they’ve even falsely claimed I wasn’t at check-in on time, despite clear evidence and witnesses.
“BA’s own motto is ‘To Fly. To Serve.’ Yet here they’ve served nothing but denial. Mistakes happen, but trust is earned by owning them.”
A spokesperson for British Airways said: “We have apologised to our customer for their experience, and we are in touch to make things right.”
