Can easyJet wrongly turn passengers away from flights and reject claims with impunity?

Plane Talk: The budget airline seems intent on persuading wrongly offloaded passengers to give up and go away

Distant dream: The Slovenian capital, Ljubljana, to which Tracey Robbens was wrongly told she couldn’t fly (Getty/iStock)

“Nothing makes up for the upset at being turned away at the boarding gate after looking forward to going away.”

Tracey Robbens is one of thousands of British travellers wrongly denied boarding by airlines who chose to ignore the post-Brexit European Union rules on passport validity.

In January she and her husband Tommy travelled from their home in Penzance to London Gatwick airport for a flight to Ljubljana. They planned to stay a couple of nights in the Slovenian capital and then move on to Lake Bled for five days of walking and exploring.

Both had valid passports that entitled them to board an easyJet flight from London Gatwick to Ljubljana. But instead the airline chose to impose a non-existent “EU rule” and wreck their holiday.

Ground staff working for easyJet insisted, wrongly, that Tracey’s passport could not be used after it was nine years and six months old. This is complete nonsense. But if an official at an airport says you are not travelling then all you can do is comply – and later claim the money you are owed by the airline.

Yet seven months on, Tracey was still being falsely blamed for easyJet’s mistake and refused compensation. Almost unbelievably, her third rejection came a week after easyJet assured me: “We are reissuing guidance to our customer teams, to ensure current passport validity rules are clear.”

As I told easyJet last year, there are just two rules for British passport holders travelling to the European Union. One is based on the issue date, the other on the expiry date.

• On day of arrival in the EU: issued less than 10 years ago.
• On day of intended departure from the EU: at least three months to expiry date.

The final, incoherent message from easyJet’s customer service team appeared to pretend Tracey needed six months remaining on her passport before its 10th birthday. She was told: “British passport is valid only for 10 years from the date of issue and should be valid for six months upon arrival.”

Tracey is still upset about the lack of compassion shown by ground staff who were imposing non-existent rules: “Me being in tears and my husband being told he could still fly.

“Then to be escorted through the airport and three members of staff  – one of them working at passport control – all saying they could not understand why I had been denied boarding.”

What possessed easyJet – and its bigger rival, Ryanair – to invent their own rules on passport validity, unfairly denying holidays to thousands of customers and laying themselves open to millions of pounds in claims, is anyone’s guess.

After months of discussion with the Migration Department of the European Commission in Brussels in 2021, I presented all the leading airlines and holiday companies with the precise post-Brexit requirements for UK passport holders to the EU. I provided all the official correspondence and contacts, and invited to them to conduct their own checks to verify the rules.

But easyJet and others chose not to do so – apparently relying instead on hopeless and misleading online information provided by the UK government. As I explained repeatedly to the airlines, the only rules that count are those imposed by the European Union.

Only in the spring of 2022 did easyJet – and Ryanair – agree to comply with the EU’s actual rules. Shortly afterwards, the UK government finally fell into line.

At which point, it should have been a matter of easyJet assigning a team to deal fairly with the travellers who had been wrongly denied boarding and swiftly compensating them for the airline’s failures.

Instead, easyJet continued to heap blame on passengers who were properly documented. A cynic would speculate that this was done in the hope that they would give up and go away, knowing they could do so with impunity.

The final rejection from easyJet to Tracey ended: “We do agree that this is not the outcome you would have anticipated, however, we need to adhere to our terms and conditions to be fair to each and every customer of ours.”

To be fair to each and every customer, easyJet must now go back and check how many other passengers have been wrongly denied boarding on their holiday flight – and then refused the compensation due to them.