Woman warns travellers after she was banned from flight over ripped passport
You pack your suitcase, head to the airport and can think of nothing else but that early-morning, pre-flight pint - only to be rejected at check-in over a ripped passport.
Would there be anything more frustrating?
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Between getting it in and out of your bag and taking it around the world, it's not difficult for your passport to get a bit battered.
Your water bottle might leak on it, or it might get crumpled up under your various snacks and devices - but TikToker Amy Grundy has urged people to double check the state of their passports after a disastrous ordeal when she attempted to board a flight from Manchester to Thailand.
In a clip shared online, Grundy described how she arrived at the airport ready for her flight, but her passport was 'denied' due to a rip in one of the inside pages used to collect stamps.
Grundy was told to go to Liverpool to get a new passport, but there weren't any appointment slots available there.
Instead, she had to travel all the way to Glasgow to get a pristine new passport.
"24 hours later, £700 down and crying so much, I got a passport," she said.
If you do have a damaged passport, the government says it won't issue a new one until it's satisfied that the owner is a British national who is entitled to a passport, and that they are the person identified in the passport.
"Before we issue a replacement passport, we need to understand how the damage occurred," the government adds. "On some passports, how it happened will be obvious and there will be no need to contact the customer, in others the customer must tell us what happened to their passport."
Though Grundy was obviously stressed over the ordeal with her passport, not all viewers were sympathetic as they pointed out she'd have been lucky to be able to travel with her passport the way it was.
"At what point did you think you would be able to travel using that! It’s a mess!," one person wrote, while another added: "Am I the only one who treats my passport like a newborn child? Mine’s 5 years old and near pristine."
My British Passport explains that as a blanket rule, 'damaged or defaced passports are considered invalid and cannot be used for travel purposes.'
Having learned her lesson, Grundy commented: "Don't travel with a ripped passport guys."
You've been warned: with Summer officially upon us, make sure you check your passport before heading to the airport!
Emily Brown