EasyJet has apologised to a man who was stopped from boarding a flight with his five-year-old daughter after being wrongly identified as a blacklisted passenger.
Lawyer Sean Reilly, from Golders Green, London, was checking in at London Stansted for a flight to Bilbao when easyJet staff refused to let him on and took him to a customer service desk where two armed police officers were waiting.
The 42-year-old was told he was on a ‘no-fly’ list and check-in staff threatened him with arrest under terrorism laws.
Eventually he was allowed to take a taxi home and flew out to meet his family the following day on a British Airways flight, according to the Mirror.
The mistake arose because of an incident on flight to Toulouse four months earlier when two of Reilly’s business associates had been accused of being in an altercation with easyJet staff.
Mr Reilly had been scheduled to be on that flight but had, in fact, made alternative travel arrangements and was not on the plane.
After the incident, Mr Reilly had been warned he might be on a blacklist but he informed the airline he was not even on the flight. After not getting any response, he assumed there was no problem.
After booking his flight to Bilbao, he was sent emails by Easyjet about car hire and seat upgrades.
It wasn’t until he got to the airport that the trouble started.
An easyJet spokesman said: "EasyJet would like to apologise to Mr Reilly for the inconvenience caused by denying him boarding on a flight from London Stansted to Bilbao on 13th July.
"Unfortunately, he was mistakenly refused travel due to being incorrectly identified as a disruptive passenger on an earlier flight from London Gatwick to Toulouse.
"We have in place a robust procedure with measures to be followed which allows us to refuse future travel to passengers who are particularly disruptive.
"Unfortunately, in this particular case these haven’t been followed which has led to a case of mistaken identity.
"Although easyJet has never had an instance of this happening in the past, we are currently reviewing this case so we can ensure it does not happen again.
‘Whilst they are rare, we take all incidents of disruptive behaviour on board very seriously and we will be following up with the correct perpetrator retrospectively."
The spokesman said the airline was currently in discussions with Mr Reilly about compensation and associated costs.
