Day Zero – Going nowhere?

Are we nearly there yet? (Part 1)

It’s the unearthly hour of 6 am, as we make our way to Edinburgh airport to get our flight. Nevertheless, we are excited and manage to contain ourselves until we are in the airport region before we ask our driver Pete (Fi’s husband) – ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

We get dropped off and practically jog into the terminal to get out of the freezing cold!

As we stand at the check-in and passport pre-screening stage – you know the spot where all eyes are on you for that split second – our excitement suddenly becomes despair as it quickly becomes clear that something is wrong with one of the passports!

…and at that moment our plans for a relaxing pre-flight breakfast with an indulgent glass of fizz evaporate into thin air!

Because it’s then Fi, is told – ‘You can’t travel on this passport’

…in utter disbelief, we ask the obvious question – ‘Why?’

The reply comes back – ‘Your passport has expired’.

Parrot talk

Looking back, I think the reply was more like ‘Your passport has expired’, followed by something about a government website …then ‘blah blah blah’.

Because let’s face it, after this revelation and the accompanying realisation we would not be going on holiday today or potentially at all, we were in shock and could only take in small snippets of information.

For a moment there were tears while frozen open-mouthed in disbelief …before we regained our composure and started to fight back.

We asked what they meant thinking, ‘Are you stupid?! Of course it’s not expired! …it’s not even within the mythical 6 months because it expires in September!’

Rather annoyingly, they just kept repeating over and over, parrot fashion – ‘Your passport has expired’… ‘Your passport has expired’ …blah, blah and more blah!

Now Fi and I are both very calm people, but even we were getting a bit annoyed as the parrot talk started to wear thin.

They seemed to have no idea that repeating the same thing over and over again didn’t help our understanding.

(So much for customer service and this from the travel company that was supposed to hold our hand every step of the way, well there was no handholding here! …although we were getting dangerously close to a ‘throat-holding’ situation!)

Eventually, as the parrot was about to launch into her ‘chat’ yet again, I found myself putting my hand up in the universal stop sign (No, not that sign! …otherwise we’d have been arrested and packed off on a completely different type of ‘holiday’!)

No, this was time for full Business Analysis / UX mode!

I blinded her with the science of the user interface – The passport, which is the user’s interface, clearly shows the passport had not expired, so it is not helpful to keep saying it has. So, what is the rationale for this action?

Linda Parker, very experienced BA, who is supposed to be on holiday for God’s sake!

Finally, we gained a little ground (but only a little!) – and perhaps you are one of the ones who knows what follows…

It seems Fi’s passport had an extension …which was no longer acceptable in EU countries.

This means that the passport expiry date in your passport no longer really means the expiry date of your passport. Instead, the powers-that-be appear to assess your passport on the start date …very strange! It kinda begs the question – why have a passport expiry date?!

Anyway, I digress… The upshot was it could not be used.

I don’t know how, but in all the other news around Brexit and then COVID this little snippet passed us by. Apparently, we were expected to have made a point of reading or watching the right snippet of the news, fully comprehending all of the legislation from that time …you know, just in case it ever came in useful!

Alas, like thousands of other would-be holidaymakers (an occurrence happening every day!), somehow, we, like those other poor souls, missed it…

…silly us!

Anyway…

Back to our story

By now, we were frazzled to the core and Fi was understandably more than a bit tearful. It had just gone 9am and our flight to Lanzarote, the very one we were supposed to be on, was just about to take off while we were still ‘lost in transit’.

<PAUSE FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT>

We felt like we’d already lived a whole day of our lives as we stood there numb, gazing aimlessly at the departure board as it flashed up ‘Flight to Lanzarote Departed’, taking with it all our hopes and dreams of a few hard-earned days in the sunshine!

So, we took the only option we could…