Who knew that having a spot of tea could be so harmful?
A UK couple has accused Ryanair employees of kicking them out of the airport after barring them from flying due to a minuscule tea stain on one of their passports.
“It’s just a stain on her passport,” Rory Allen, 29, told Kennedy News of the “embarrassing” incident, which occurred July 7 while he and his girlfriend Nina Wilkins were preparing to fly the budget airline to Costa Brava, Spain for a week.
The seven-night vacay had been a Christmas gift present from Nina’s 57-year-old mum Sarah Wilkins.
Things began innocuously enough with the Warwickshire natives presenting their passports to the Ryanair check-in at East Midlands Airport, before proceeding to security.
“She [the desk clerk] looked at all of our passports and didn’t really bat an eyelid and then we went through security,” said Allen, who was stoked to go on vacation with his soulmate.
The couple reportedly spent over $250 on food, drinks and other airport concessions, unaware that their dream jaunt was about to take a major left turn.
“We weren’t even thinking about the possibility of not being let on the plane,” said Allen.
Things went south during boarding after the gate staff examined Wilkins’ travel document and declared that they wouldn’t let the lovebirds on the plane because of a tea stain.
“This passenger was correctly refused travel from East Midlands to Girona (7 Jul) as their passport was damaged and therefore not valid for travel,” a Ryanair spokesperson said in a statement. “Ryanair requires each passenger to ensure that their passport is valid for travel in line with the relevant requirements at the time of travel.”
A Ryanair manager later apologized and explained that the desk clerk should have never waved them through.
However, Allen found the predicament ridiculous as they’d used her tea-stained passport at other airports without issue.
In addition, he claimed that the doc’s essential information was visible despite the splotch.
Nonetheless, the couple was forced to vacate the airport.
“After we got our bags, we got escorted out of the airport like we were criminals and it was embarrassing,” said Allen, whose girlfriend was especially distraught by their unceremonial exit.
“I got really upset and I cried and I got so anxious,” she said. “I suffer with cystic fibrosis and signed as disabled so the way I felt I was escorted out the airport, there was no care or help.” The situation was extra distressing given that Nina’s family were on the plane and had taken off for sunny Spain.
The paramours thought that their vacation was over before it began.
A glimmer of hope came after the aforementioned airline manager urged the couple to rebook their flight through Jet2 as the airline accepted passports with some damage — a discrepancy Allen found ludicrous.
“I don’t understand how one airline can do this and another doesn’t,” he lamented.
Left with no other recourse, the bedraggled Brits obliged and booked the flights through Jet2, a decision that cost them over $400 for tickets plus other modes of transportation. To make matters worse, the couple missed out on the first day of their vacation.
Thankfully, Nina didn’t experience any passport-related issues on the pair’s Ryanair flight back to the UK from Spain on July 14.
While Allen was grateful that they were able to salvage the trip, he still found it shocking that they had to endure so much rigamarole.