Easyjet passenger mistakenly put on no-fly list

A lawyer has told how he was threatened with arrest under the Terrorism Act by Easyjet staff as he was trying to board a plane for a family holiday - because he had wrongly been put on the airline's no-fly list.

Sean Reilly, 42, from Golders Green, London, was trying to board a flight from London Stansted to Bilbao with his daughter Seren, five, and her grandparents, when he was escorted to a customer desk and met by two police officers.

He was forced to miss his flight, and took a taxi home before flying out to meet his family on a British Airways service the next day.

He then spent £400 on a new return flight so he could travel back with his daughter.

It later emerged that Mr Reilly had been wrongly blacklisted for "abusive behaviour" after two business associates had been accused of an altercation with stand on an Easyjet flight four months before.

Mt Reilly had been scheduled to be on that flight after it was booked for him, but made alternative arrangements and never went on the plane.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mr Reilly said: "I've never been so humiliated in all my life. My daughter was in tears throughout the flight. It is the first time she had been taken abroad without her mum or dad."

Explaining the incident, he said an airline employee refused his boarding because of an incident with two passengers, adding: "He said he was going to get the police to arrest me as he had powers under the Terrorism Act. I said 'I'm not a terrorist and this flight had been booked since January' but he didn't seem interested."

"I had checked in online, no problem, no problem at the bag drop, no problem going through security and then came to the boarding gate with 20 minutes to go and see my mum is alright, my dad is alright, my daughter is alright - then I was stopped. It was an absolute nightmare."

Mr Reilly is now seeking to "recover his losses and damages" from Easyjet.

According to the Mirror, 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.

"We are currently in discussions with Mr Reilly with regards to compensation and associated costs."



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