“We are looking into this with our ground handling partner” – so repeats easyJet, after staff working for Britain’s biggest budget airline wrecked yet another family holiday by inventing their own rules on passport validity.
Four years on from the post-Brexit passport rules coming into effect, many travel firms are causing needless upset and expense to people who are fully documented to travel. Even taking into account the large number of passengers that easyJet handles, the airline seems particularly prone to wrecking people’s holidays needlessly – most recently a 50th birthday family trip to Paris.
What should you do if this happens to you? This is a step-by-step guide.
Know the rules
After the UK decided to leave the European Union and make British passport holders “third-country nationals” along with Venezuelans and Samoans, the passports of UK travellers must meet two conditions:
- No older than 10 years on the day of outbound travel to the EU.
- At least three months to expiry date on the intended day of leaving the EU.
Many people are being correctly turned away – usually for breaching the first of these conditions. If your passport has had its 10th birthday since the date of issue, you are no longer eligible to travel to the European Union (except Ireland) or wider Schengen area – which includes Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.
For other countries, the rules on passport vary widely. Many key destinations for British travellers, including Australia, Canada, Mexico, Tunisia and the US, have no minimum validity requirement. Others require six months before expiry.
No other country outside the Schengen area has any interest in the issue date of your passport; they only look at the expiry date.
I know my passport is valid but the airline says it isn’t
This is an extremely stressful and upsetting position for any passenger to be in. It is made all the more difficult because these mistakes are typically made while boarding, with the minutes ticking away. And if someone who works in aviation is telling you that you are in the wrong, it is tricky to prove otherwise.
But please remain polite and respectful at all times. If a member of ground staff wrongly says your valid passport is not acceptable, that…
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