A holidaymaker from Northern Ireland faced a terrifying ordeal after being detained at a Swiss airport and placed in a facility she described as a "mini prison", all due to a simple packing error.
The Innocent Mistake That Grounded a Getaway
Emma Groves, a 35-year-old from Belfast, was looking forward to a four-night break in Zurich, Switzerland with her boyfriend. The trip began smoothly on December 1 when they checked in and passed through security at Dublin Airport without issue. Emma had booked the Aer Lingus flight weeks earlier after seeing a tempting hotel on TikTok.
However, the trouble started upon arrival at Zurich Airport's border control. Officials informed Emma that the passport she was carrying had been flagged as cancelled. The document was invalid for travel. The reason? Emma had recently replaced a lost passport but had failed to destroy the original when it later turned up.
"I had grabbed it the night before and gave my passport to my boyfriend, he minds them because I do lose everything," Emma explained. "Only the night before I thought 'my goodness am I going to be able to travel, the gold has completely faded off' this which is strange for it being a new passport. It was in a drawer with all my moisturisers and fake tans. So I did think it's probably just rubbed off."
Detention in a Transit 'Hotel'
After the discovery, border police escorted Emma and her boyfriend to a room. She was informed that because her passport was cancelled, it was an invalid document. She would have to be flown back to Dublin immediately and could only re-enter Switzerland with her valid replacement passport. Her boyfriend chose to stay and wait for her return.
Emma was then taken to what she called a "weird" airport hotel, which felt like a holding facility. "They put me in an airport hotel and I was in there for about three or four hours, but it was just like a room with a lot of beds in it separated by curtains," she said. "It was scary enough in the hotel because there were a lot of people in there, and there kind of wasn't really any security or even a locked door."
To pass the time, she watched episodes of Stranger Things that she had downloaded for the flight. She was eventually told around 6pm that she would be on an 8pm flight back to Dublin.
The Costly Journey Home and Back
Emma was chaperoned through the airport and boarded the aircraft first, as her passport had been confiscated. She was given documents stating she had been denied entry. Upon landing in Dublin, her mother met her with the correct, replacement passport.
This allowed Emma to book new flights to Zurich, an unexpected expense she described as completely unnecessary. Even the return journey had a hiccup; Swiss border officials were initially confused by her paperwork which stated she had already entered but not left the country. The forms from her detention eventually clarified the situation.
Thankfully, border officials confirmed it was an honest mistake and assured Emma she would face no future travel complications as a result.
Airline and Security Protocols
The incident raises questions about document checks. Emma noted that at Dublin Airport, their passports were scanned during bag drop. "You'd think they would pick up if it was cancelled," she said. Swiss border security reportedly told her she shouldn't have been able to get that far.
In a statement, Aer Lingus clarified its role: "Passengers travelling with Aer Lingus are responsible for ensuring they have all relevant travel documentation... Passports used for travel must be valid and in date. If a travel document is not valid for travel, passengers may be refused entry when they reach their planned destination, as was the case in this instance."
The airline verifies that a passport matches the passenger's identity and is valid, but a discrepancy involving a cancelled but in-date passport is typically spotted upon entry to another country, not at departure.
Emma's story serves as a stark reminder to all travellers to double-check their travel documents thoroughly before heading to the airport, and to properly destroy old or replaced passports to avoid similar distressing and expensive situations.
