Furious woman booted off TUI flight at Manchester Airport after 'humiliating' mistake
A fuming mum has claimed that TUI threw her off a £7,000 family holiday - after they applied the passport rules for the wrong country. Anna Laffin was preparing to board her flight from Manchester Airport to Morocco on July 25 when she was informed that her passport, issued in May 2014, was too old.
The 46-year-old insists she explained there were still six months remaining on the passport and that only three months were required for travel to Morocco, but she says staff did not listen. Anna claims that the staff member applied a rule applicable to visitors to the European Union, not Africa, where the requirement is for the document to be less than 10 years old.
A distraught Anna claims she was forced to watch as her daughter Ariane Laffin, 11, her partner Mark Elliott, 48, and his daughter Errin Elliott, 18, boarded the flight without her. The nurse says she was then escorted away to collect the luggage TUI had removed from the plane before taking a solitary taxi ride home.
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However, the following day [July 26], an irate Anna spoke to a TUI customer service agent who apologised and admitted she had been wrongly denied boarding. They confirmed her passport was valid for her 11-night Moroccan holiday and arranged for a taxi and hotel so she could fly to North Africa from Birmingham Airport two days later [Jul 27].
Anna has expressed her anger at the staff member's insistence and the limited time she had to research the issue before her family had to board the flight without her. The government website states that visitors to Morocco only need their