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Hull is an intriguing city that rewards a weekend stay. But even the city’s most ardent fans would concede that is not quite such a draw as Paris. Regrettably, Laura and Joe Booth are spending the weekend beside the Humber rather than the Seine.
On Friday morning the couple arrived at Humberside airport at 5am to board KLM flight 970 to Amsterdam, with a connection to Paris CDG. Joe had arranged it as a surprise trip to celebrate Laura’s birthday.
They both had passports valid for their weekend trip. Laura’s passport expires in June this year, but is good for travel anywhere in the EU until 21 March 2025. Plug the issue and expiry dates and details of the trip into the KLM “TravelDoc” passport checker and you get a big green ticket with a message reading: “You are clear to board this flight.”
But ground staff working for KLM at the airport decided they knew better.
“Check-in staff took it upon themselves to remove three months from her passport validity – and refused her a boarding pass,” Joe told me soon after 9am on Friday.
It is four years since that “oven-ready” Brexit deal with the European Union took effect. The UK successfully negotiated with Brussels for British passport holders to become “third-country nationals” like citizens of Venezuela and Samoa. That means a UK passport must meet two conditions:
- On the day of outbound travel to the EU, less than 10 years since the issue date.
- On the intended day of return from the EU, at least three months remaining before the expiry date.
Back in 2021, I told all the major airlines what the rules were. British Airways, Jet2 and Wizz Air complied. For a time, Ryanair and easyJet used an entirely fictitious rule of their own making, claiming UK passports were not valid for Europe more than nine years and nine months after issue. Eventually they fell into line.
Ground staff have a difficult, time-pressured job to do. They also have to enforce passport validity rules. But given that most UK citizens flying abroad are heading to the European Union, they really should have mastered the basic rules by now.
At Humberside they haven’t. The couple says they were told: “The passport is only valid for 10 years from the issue date of 21 April 2015, it therefore expires on 21 April and this does not give you 90 days to travel to the EU.
“You will not be boarding this plane today.”
The ground staff even issued a document excluding Laura from the flight claiming her passport expired on 21 April, rather than the actual expiry date two months later.
This is an absurd assertion. Before booking anything, Joe had checked and double-checked the regulations.
“We left the airport heartbroken and confused and returned home to our very confused children and their childcare providers,” he told me.
“I’ve been incorrectly made to feel incredibly irresponsible by KLM,” Joe told me. “I’ve lost a fortune; non-refundable flights (£600) and hotel (£700), tickets to the Moulin Rouge which my wife has wanted to go to for over 20 years (£250), plus a whole host of other costs and attractions we booked and paid for. It’s all gone.
“The staff at the airport even marked us as a ‘no show’ just so they could get us off their check-in screens and move on to the next customer.”
Joe spent Friday morning on the phone to KLM. “To my absolute amazement, the representative insisted the same, saying the passport expires on 21 April. I told her to check this and she did go speak to colleagues and call me back a short while later; stating again, that we were not able to fly.”
He was told: “This is your error, the tickets are non-refundable, you are not able to rebook, you have been given paperwork at the airport explaining why.”
What does KLM have to say? Nothing so far. I contacted the airline as soon as Joe and Laura contacted me on Friday, in the hope that the trip could be salvaged, and again later in the day.
Joe, meanwhile, continued his calls to KLM – culminating in one representative of the airline inventing an entirely new rule, saying: “Actually you need six months’ validity on your passport to fly with Air France KLM anyway.”
You may wonder what possesses staff to make up rules and wreck travel plans. The only explanation I can come up with is “an abundance of caution” to avoid them allowing someone to travel who is not properly documented. In theory such a person could be refused entry and the airline could be fined. The number of times I have heard of this happening since the post-Brexit rules took effect: zero. The number of cases of passengers being wrongfully turned away by airline staff: dozens.
It is time to make airlines pay for wrongly tearing up passengers’ plans. At present they need pay as little as £220 for denied boarding compensation. Joe and Laura are rightly going to pursue KLM for all the lost costs, totalling over £2,000. But in addition the Civil Aviation Authority should crack down on airlines that cannot properly train their ground staff.
I can, sadly, provide plenty of examples – including on previously on KLM – where innocent passengers had their holidays wrecked. I really don’t want another such case landing on my desk.
Joe Booth is still seething: “KLM singlehandedly destroyed my wife’s birthday present and our planned weekend in Paris.’
