A British family’s holiday was ruined after a self-service check-in machine left one of their passports badly damaged
There is no universal rule book when it comes to assessing whether a passport is too damaged to be valid. But airlines face a fine if they allow a passenger to board who is later turned away at the border, so they usually play it safe – as the following case study demonstrates.
Emily Allen writes
On the morning of September 8, me, my husband and our two young children were due to travel on a British Airways flight to Corfu for an all-inclusive, one-week holiday.
When we arrived at Terminal 5 departures, I used BA’s self-service check-in machines to print our boarding passes. Initially, I placed my passport into the machine the wrong way around, so slid it back out carefully and turned it around. During this process the photo/observations page, which on my 2016 document is not laminated – just paper covered by a thin film patch – ripped, leaving an inch-long tear across the edge of the passport photo.