After repeatedly misleading customers about their rights, Britain’s biggest budget airline has told The Independent it will contact and compensate travellers who were incorrectly blamed for having out-of-date passports for travel to the European Union.
How can you tell if you were turned away at the departure gate wrongly, by easyJet or any other airline – and what can you claim?
These are the key questions and answers, assembled with the help of a leading consumer lawyer: Gary Rycroft, partner at Joseph A Jones of Lancaster,
What’s the background?
Following the UK’s choice to become “third country nationals” after leaving the EU, two post-Brexit conditions on validity apply to British passports for travel to the European Union:
- Younger than 10 years old on the day you travel to the EU.
- At least three months remaining on the day you intend to leave the EU.
Because some British passports issued before September 2018 were valid for up to 10 years and nine months, many passengers were correctly denied boarding at a UK airport: if their passport had celebrated its 10th birthday, they were ineligible to travel to the European Union.
But many travellers whose passports were issued between nine years and nine months were wrongly turned away.
That was because some airlines, travel agents and holiday companies – as well as the UK government – concocted the possibility that the two passport validity conditions could somehow be linked.
The media made matters worse. One typical newspaper article falsely reported that, for travel to the EU, a British passport “ceases to be valid nine years and nine months after it was issued”. This was nonsense.
There was never any indication that the two passport validity conditions were linked, as The Independent established with the help of the Department of Migration at the European Commission.
Even after The Independent passed all the official correspondence with Brussels to airlines, holiday companies and the UK government, and invited them to make their own checks, some travel firms continued to turn travellers away despite them holding valid documentation.
Eventually easyJet – as well as Ryanair and the UK government – accepted that they had been making up their own rules. At this point, passengers whose holidays were needlessly wrecked could commence claims against companies that had wrongly denied them boarding.
So that’s all good, then?
No, because easyJet then rejected valid claims. The Independent found multiple examples of passengers who were perfectly entitled to travel and yet whose claims for compensation were emphatically rejected. The airline decided to compound the original failure by insisting the travellers were wrong, placing the blame on people who had committed no errors.
Lawyer Gary Rycroft says: “It’s disgraceful that easyJet sought to swerve their liability for paying compensation that, by their own admission, they know full well was payable to their customers.
“It is one thing to not alert passengers as to their legal right to compensation, but it is beyond that and deeply cynical to act in a way which is deliberately obstructive to the correct legal process being adhered to.”
What happened with such cases?
On each occasion when The Independent raised them, easyJet insisted a “misunderstanding” had been made, that the passenger would receive their due recompense and that customer service teams had been reminded of the rules.
Eventually, though, the airline conducted an internal investigation and decided to change its policies.
What has changed?
An easyJet spokesperson said: “We are sorry there has been a small number of further cases since easyJet has updated its guidance to its customer service staff to make the correct rules clear, alongside re-issuing clear and urgent guidance to UK airports.
“We are looking at all cases of denied boarding due to passport validity to check that other cases have not occurred, and if we identify any we will be proactively contacting the customer to provide compensation where it was incorrectly rejected.”
What am I entitled to?
Indisputably, anyone wrongly turned away by easyJet or any other UK or EU airline is entitled to cash compensation under European air passengers’ rights rules.
The minimum is €250/£220 for flights of under 1,500km, or €400/£350 for longer easyJet flights.
And how far is that? Well, to Alicante in Spain, Luton and anywhere north is over 1,500km, while from Heathrow, Bristol and anywhere south to the Costa Blanca city is under 1,500km.
Can only person who was turned away claim?
The airline might argue that other travellers in the party could have flown and therefore only the person wrongly denied boarding is entitled to compensation. But easyJet has wisely decided to accept that anyone else on the booking who failed to travel as a result of the error will get compensation,
But I lost accommodation and car rental costs as a result of being wrongly denied boarding. Can I claim?
I believe you can, under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 – which requires companies to deliver a service with reasonable care and skill. Once it became clear that easyJet was wrongfully turning people away, and I reminded the airline about the rules, they became liable under contract law for what lawyers call “direct losses”. Gary Rycroft defines these as “losses foreseeable from the breach of contract law by the airline”.
He says: “In my view in these cases that would include lost accommodation, car rentals costs, Covid tests and any other expense directly associated with the flight which could not be taken because of the unlawful conduct of the airline.”
What if my claim is refused?
First, ensure that you were wrongly denied boarding; sadly, many passengers have had inadmissible British passports.
If you are confident that the airline was responsible, and that you met all the necessary conditions (eg reaching the airport and the departure gate in good time) then write a Letter Before Action to the carrier, giving it two weeks to settle your claim before you take legal action.
Gary Rycroft said: “Passengers may feel the only way to enforce their legal rights is to launch a claim for their compensation under the Small Claims Track.
“Usually a successful claimant under the Small Claims Claim Track cannot claim legal costs from the defendant but the Court does have the right to waive that rule where the defendant has acted unreasonably.”
If it is clear that an airline has misrepresented a passenger’s rights, it may be that the court makes an adverse costs order made against them.
Could passengers be wrongly turned away in future?
Inevitably some will: even before Brexit travellers were occasionally wrongly denied boarding because of mistakes by ground staff. But easyJet now says that any decision at the airport to deny boarding to an individual based on passport validity will need to be signed off by an easyJet supervisor.
