by A four-year-old and his mother took easyJet flight 1586 from Southampton to Geneva for a week’s holiday in the Alps. Shortly after 6pm on 17 December 2023, they cleared Swiss passport control.
Should not, according to easyJet, be able to do. Earlier the same day, the airline turned them away from the Gatwick-Geneva flight.
But EasyJet sold them instant flights for an extra £198 and put them on the plane from Hampshire airport.
The four-year-old, his two sisters and his parents live in Guernsey. They were all booked on the easyJet morning flight from London Gatwick to the Swiss airport, paying just over £150 each.
A few days before her holiday, the parents realized that the four-year-old’s passport would not meet the post-Brexit passport validity requirements requested by the UK after leaving the EU.
Fortunately, Guernsey’s passport office is able to issue temporary passports for children that are valid throughout Europe for a year. They duly received the document and traveled to Gatwick.
The father describes the events at the Sussex airport departure gate: “We tried to board the easyJet flight. The gate found that my son had a UK/Guernsey green-backed passport valid for one year.
“The gate staff called their office, and the office refused him boarding. We tried to explain but to no avail. So my wife had to stay with our four year old, who was in trouble, while I traveled with our other two children, who were also in trouble.
“When my wife and son were brought from the air to the country, a Gatwick immigration officer asked what was happening. The gate staff said it was an invalid pass. When the immigration officer checked, he said: ‘No, this is a valid passport’ – at which point the ground staff told him the flight had left anyway and rushed my wife and on my son.”
Knowing that the document was valid for travel to Switzerland, his wife booked a one-day flight with easyJet from Southampton to Geneva. Both traveled without incident. Due to his late arrival, they had to take a taxi for the past time of their journey.
On their return, the father sought compensation for the additional costs as well as the denied boarding compensation they were owed.
The airline’s response was indicative of the case of Jacqueline McGeough, who was refused easyJet a holiday flight to Italy. The airline told her six times she was denied boarding properly – even though a closer look at her passport and travel dates would show she was clear to travel. Only when The Independent easyJet accepted the mistake.
In the case of the family from Guernsey, easyJet’s customer service department repeated the father’s appeals several times.
The airline initially said: “After checking the booking, your records show that the passenger on the booking was refused carriage due to invalid or invalid documentation (passport) required to travel with easyJet.”
When he appealed that decision, he was told: “We have received an update from our senior staff, they have made an inquiry and confirmed that a temporary passport is not accepted for travel to Switzerland, and it was rightly refused. Therefore, under the regulatory guidelines we cannot compensate your claim for costs and compensation.”
The father was lame, as EasyJet itself showed that his son was perfectly capable of travelling.
His last attempt before contact The Independent but also: “Our assessment team took another look at your claim application and investigated all available information and documented that you were denied transportation due to insufficient or invalid documentation (Temporary [sic] passport) required to travel with easyJet.”
One hour The Independent contacted easyJet, the airline accepted it was wrong to turn the four-year-old away – blaming a third-party documentation system.
A spokesman said: “Like many airlines, easyJet uses an automated verification system called TravelDoc to validate passenger travel documents which uses immigration data collected from various sources including government agencies.
“Unfortunately, the system incorrectly informed the ground agent on this occasion that the passenger was unable to travel on his flight from London Gatwick to Geneva and the same information was subsequently provided to our customer services team.
“We have raised this with TravelDoc who have rectified this and are in contact with Mr Newark to apologize for his experience, compensate him for his flights and any travel expenses incurred and the compensation due to provide them.”
It appears that Southampton ground staff did not consult TravelDoc, knowing the passport was valid, and were therefore unaware of the false information.
EasyJet says TravelDoc has now corrected its error.
The mother and four-year-old are owed £350 each in boarding compensation and refunds for the unused EasyJet flights from Gatwick, as well as the extra costs caused by the airline’s mistake.
