Meghan Law, who is an NHS nurse, has expressed her anger after her teenage son Alix Dawson was not allowed to board the Qatar Airways plane for Phuket, Thailand
A mum has blasted Qatar Airways after her 13-year-old son was denied boarding their flight for Thailand.
Meghan Law said there was “no justification” for her experience at Edinburgh Airport, which threatened to derail her £3,000 family holiday. Check-in staff, though, told Meghan there was a “luggage sticker mark” on Alix Dawson’s passport, which they said constituted “damage”.
The mum was ordered to go to Glasgow Airport — around 50 miles away — for a new emergency document. Scrambling to salvage her family’s holiday, Meghan contacted TUI, who she had booked the trip with, for their advice. The tour operator found no issues with the passport and put them on the next available flight to Thailand.
But Meghan, 33, has now vowed to never use Qatar Airways again. The NHS nurse, who has two kids, said: “If I hadn’t booked through TUI and booked it myself, we just wouldn’t have been able to go on holiday. One way from Glasgow on the same day of travel would’ve been £2,800. There’s no way I would’ve been able to pay that.
“I’d never had an experience like that at any other airport. There was no justification for it. I’ll never fly with Qatar again. It ruined the start of the trip – it was so stressful.”
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Meghan, who lives in Aberdeen, has now returned from her two-week holiday, but wants to raise awareness of her experience. HM Passport Office classes a passport as damaged for several reasons, including if details are indecipherable, if there are missing or detached pages and if there is a chemical or ink spillage on any page.
But Meghan said Alix’s document had neither of these issues, and had previously been accepted dozens of times at airports. She continued: “I said I’ve used this umpteen times. No one’s ever mentioned any damage on it before. There were no rips or stains, I don’t know what she was trying to imply. I was really shocked.
“She told me that I need to get an emergency passport from Glasgow Airport. Then she said actually it’s not your passport that’s the problem, it’s your child’s, Alix.
“What they were trying to say was that the luggage check-in stickers that had been stuck on one of the pages [and] had damaged the page. But it wasn’t even on the photo page.
“There were no rips, it was just where the sticker marks had been. They said we couldn’t travel with it. I knew there were no issues with their passports. We’d probably travelled over a dozen times with those passports. We were just left in the airport with no help and no advice.”
The Mirror has contacted Qatar Airways for comment.
