UKBA fails to check passenger passports

Security lapse probed as Ryanair flight disembarks without security checks.

Travel Insurance News - 16/09/2010

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Bournemouth airport is to investigate security failings after nearly 200 people on a flight from Spain entered the UK without any of them having their passports checked. The passengers left the Ryanair plane and walked through the Dorset airport unchallenged as nobody from the UK Border Agency (UKBA) was there to check their passports. Bob Shepherd, 59, was a passenger on the plane. The managing director of a property firm based in Spain, he is a frequent flyer. He said that the passengers on his plane got into the UK without any ID checks. In Malaga, there had been no passport checks and when they arrived in Bournemouth, passengers were simply waved through. A spokesperson from Bournemouth airport said it was urgently investigating how the handling agent for Ryanair let the plane’s passengers enter the arrivals building before staff from the UKBA were in place. The relevant authorities are pointing their fingers at each other. A UKBA spokesperson said it was the airline’s responsibility to advise UKBA staff about the arrival of flights and they had not been notified in a timely manner. A spokesman from Servisair, the airport operations company involved, blamed UKBA staff. He said UKBA staff apparently failed to check the arrivals board to see the flight had arrived off-schedule. Servisair staff thought UKBA staff and directed passengers to that area. Passengers gave accounts that conflicted with officials’ claims that the majority of passengers were eventually processed through the normal immigration process.

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