Heartbroken woman forced to miss holiday and left £1,000 out of pocket because of ‘unfair’ passport rule
A YOUNG woman was banned from her flight because of her passport, which she said was an unfairly strict rule.
Renee Reader, 30, was travelling to Bali for a dream holiday when she ran into problems during her stopover.
Travelling from Queensland in Australia, it was only when she arrived at Melbourne that airline staff stopped her.
After passing through security, she arrived to board only for staff to question her passport, before taking pictures of it.
She was then sent to security, only to be told she wouldn’t be boarding the plane because her passport was deemed too damaged.
Ms Reader said: “[The staff member] said ‘I’m just going to let you know, you’re not going to Bali today. You’re not getting on this flight’.”
The passport damage in question was a small yellow stain on the photograph page near the expiry date.
Some small black marks similar to pen were also flagged on the same page.
She said she started crying and was left “devastated and heartbroken” after being unable to board her flight.
Not only was she forced to miss her holiday, but she said she was left AUD$2,000 (£1,020) out of pocket.
She said: “I felt like I was a criminal.
“I was excited for this trip to go and stay at a retreat in Bali. This was time for me.”
“If I thought it would have been an issue I would have obviously gotten a new passport.”
She said that her passport even had the stain since 2022 and had already used it to fly to Bali twice with no problems.
However, Bali has some of the strictest rules in the world when it comes to damaged passports.
Airlines can be fined thousands of pounds per passenger if they allow them to arrive in Bali with damaged passports.
Ms Reader isn’t the first person to have been caught out.
Earlier this year, ex-BBC correspondent Nick Bryant was due to travel to Bali with his family for the celebrations.
Travelling from Sydney to Bali, he was stopped from boarding the flight due to a small tear in one of the pages.
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An Aussie couple were banned from their Bali flight due to a “microscopic coffee stain” on one of their passports.
And a woman said she was “left in tears in front of everyone at the airport” for similar reasons.