Was booked to go on my first trip abroad since before Covid - a trip to Portugal for a golf weekend with friends.
I got to the airport and RyanAir refused me boarding because my passport, despite being valid until December, was issued nine years and ten months ago. To enter the EU you need three months left of validity, and passports must not be more than ten years old. The airlines have been incorrectly conflating the two when the directive is quite clear. So instead of going to lovely sunny Faro I had to turn tail and head home. The EU has already clarified that this is not the correct reading of the rules - and I tried to put this to RyanAir. https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/passport-easyjet-compensation-denied-boarding-b2066803.html
However I reckoned that once in the Schengen free-travel area I’d be alright. So I popped into the Eurostar terminal in London and told them my problem. With French immigration control on the London side they spoke to the French officers, who said my passport was no problem. So I’ve shelled out many £££s to buy en early Eurostar ticket and a flight from Paris.
Fuck RyanAir! Fuck Brexit and these stupid hoops that we all have to now jump through, when we didn’t have to before.
I hope you are from Scotland because I read the title and immediately heard it in my head in a Scottish burr, and specifically in the voice of Rory McCann, which made me laugh out loud. I think you should have demanded a chicken.
I’m Australian but go to the UK regularly for various reasons. Brexit makes me so annoyed/sad I’ve just switched off from it. Can’t think about it without an increase in blood pressure.
My math is not good but that sounds like your passport was valid for another two months. You say it was good until December but it was issued nine years and ten months ago which leaves you two months left on a ten year passport.
My understanding is you cannot travel on a passport that has less than six months until expiration left on it.
The 6-month passport rule states that your passport must be valid for another six months before you depart for international travel. Depending on which country you are traveling to, the six-month period may begin from the date you leave that country or the date you arrive. SOURCE
As a general matter, if you are planning international travel, triple-check that your passport is in order and sufficient (do you need a visa in advance kind-of-thing). You do not want to find out problems when you are at the airport. Or worse, in a foreign country and unable to get home.
Until a few years back, the UK used to allow you to renew a passport a few months early and add the extra months to the new one- so if you renewed your old passport 6 months before expiry, you could get a ‘10 year’ passport that was actually valid for 10 years 6 months from date of issue.
Hence the confusion, the OP- and multiple other people in the UK- have wound up in a situation where time until issue date + 10 years isn’t long enough to allow legal travel, but time until the expiry date is. Add in an idiot airline with stupid training policies, et voila; boarding denied.
The 6 months thing isn’t universal either, incidentally, the period of validity varies by what country you’re going to as well, I think 6 months is the longest anywhere insists on for general touristy purposes, but for UK to EU it’s only 3 months, not 6, and some places just ask that it’s valid for the duration of your stay.
As you might have been able to tell from my lack of comment I did manage to get into the Schengen Zone thanks to Eurostar. From there I took a plane from Paris (Orly airport is okay but my god the queues). I’ll try to claim compensation but I’m not holding out much hope.
