“While standing at the gate with a queue behind us, with our son Ned in tears, I tried to make it clear to Karen that this was an error on easyJet’s part and she should just meet us in Amsterdam by flying on a competent airline.”
So says David Woodhouse, whose wife Karen was turned away from a birthday trip to the Netherlands because staff working for easyJet at Stansted airport invented their own rules on post-Brexit passport validity. Once again, Britain’s biggest budget airline has wrecked a family holiday due to misunderstanding conditions for travel to the European Union.
David and Karen Woodhouse had booked a three-day trip to Amsterdam for their son’s Ned’s 12th birthday, along with their daughter Connie, 14.
They paid almost £1,300 for the easyJet return flights to Amsterdam Schiphol, and arrived at London Stansted in good time for their evening flight on 9 April.
All four had passports that met the conditions for “third-country nationals” that the UK signed up for:
- Issued no more than 10 years ago on the day of outward travel.
- At least three months to the expiry date on the intended return date.
Ms Woodhouse’s passport was valid for travel out to the European Union up to 1 June 2025 for a stay of up to 90 days. But staff working for easyJet said otherwise.
Mr Woodhouse said: “The gate agents said Karen’s passport was not valid for travel because it was issued in June 2015, and needed to have three months left until it was 10 years old. I told the agent that she was wrong, and that the validity was fine, but she called her supervisor – who also said that Karen could not travel.”
Ms Woodhouse was told she would need to leave the airport. Mr Woodhouse then boarded the plane with the children. “Before Ned had finished crying, and before I had to put my phone into airplane mode, Karen texted me that she was ‘heartbroken’,” he said.
No other flights were departing to Amsterdam that evening, so Ms Woodhouse booked a KLM flight from London City early the following morning and travelled without a problem to join the family.
Even then, easyJet staff made life difficult. Mr Woodhouse wanted to ensure that his wife would be allowed on the flight home, but the airline’s call centre refused to confirm it unless they were sent a photograph of her passport.
After the family returned home, Mr Woodhouse said: “I understand that mistakes happen, but this isn’t just a simple ‘mistake’ on easyJet’s part. They have done this multiple times, and they have had plenty of time to make sure their ground staff know the rules. This is wilful.
“We had the resources and the confidence just to pay for another flight and make the best of the time we had left; a lot of families wouldn’t have had that option.
“I assume they’ll pay the bare minimum of compensation and expenses, and I’ll see another story in a few months about them doing it again to someone less fortunate.”
As is now customary, easyJet has promised to look into the incident.
A spokesperson for the airline said: “We are very sorry that Ms Woodhouse was incorrectly denied boarding on her flight from London Stansted to Amsterdam on 9 April. The guidance was not correctly followed and so we are looking into this with our ground handling partner at London Stansted airport.
“We are in touch with Ms Woodhouse to reimburse her in full for her alternative travel expenses and process the compensation she is due.”
In December 2024, easyJet passenger Ellie Boltman was wrongly told she could not travel with her husband and their two children to Tenerife for a pre-Christmas holiday in the Canary Islands. The denial of boarding took place at Luton airport, location for easyJet’s HQ. The airline later apologised.
