A British passenger has been left stranded in Prague after his friend accidentally traveled back to the United Kingdom on the wrong document. Allan Poole returned home on Steve Vincent’s passport. Vincent has criticized carrier KLM and Britain’s embassy in the Czech capital is offering assistance.
A British passenger has been left stranded in the Czech Republic after his friend accidentally traveled back to the United Kingdom on the wrong document, the BBC reports. The incident involved Allan Poole and Steve Vincent, both of Whitley Bay, a town on the northeastern coast of England.
The outlet reveals that, during the course of Poole’s journey back from the Czech capital to Newcastle via Amsterdam on Dutch carrier KLM, the document “was checked at least four times…”.
The outlet further reports that neither gate staff or border authorities at Amsterdam Airport Schipol (AMS) or those at Newcastle International Airport (NCL) spotted the error. Poole himself has stated that he was also unaware that he had taken the wrong document.
As a result, Vincent is now stranded in the Czech Republic.
In a tweet to KLM quoted by the BBC, Vincent said, “Hey KLM you let my friend travel from Prague to Newcastle on my passport (after we swapped by mistake).”
“You shouldn’t have let him on the plane. I’m trapped in Prague. What are you going to do about it?” he added.
An official from the British Embassy in Prague explained to the outlet that this kind of situation is not uncommon.
“People do travel on (the wrong passport), they don’t get checked when they come out and stuff like that. It’s quite common actually, to be honest with you, people do travel on other people’s passports accidentally, it does happen,” they said.
“Border controls sometimes don’t look, I don’t know for what reason,” the spokesperson added, confirming that the embassy was in the process of helping Vincent with emergency travel documentation.
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