14 DAY TRIAL // A British man accidentally used his girlfriend's passport when traveling to Spain, but he managed to pass through two passport controls without anyone noticing his mistake.
Barber Neil Clulow is a tall, bald man and has a goatee, while his girlfriend is blonde, and more importantly, a female, but no one seemed to notice the difference when the man boarded an international flight with her passport.
The incident happened last month, when the 50-year-old grandfather, from Halesowen, West Midlands, was heading to Benidorm to celebrate his friend's Carl Fentham 50th birthday. When he left for his 7.30 a.m. flight to Alicante from Birmingham Airport, Clulow accidentally grabbed his girlfriend's Karen Clift travel documents, but was still able to board the plane.
In his rush to catch the flight, he didn't realize he had the wrong passport, and his mistake was only discovered after he arrived in Alicante, when he and his friends were comparing passport pictures, according to Daily Mail.
To get through airport security, the man only had to show his boarding pass, while later he said he flashed his passport to a Monarch Airlines member of staff at the gate and boarded the morning flight. When he landed in Spain, he also passed through passport control at Alicante Airport without a word from the Spanish authorities.
“I handed my passport over with the boarding card when we went to board the plane and she scanned them. Then we got in to Spain and went through passport control and I flashed the passport and they never said anything,” he recalls.
When Neil discovered he had used his girlfriend's passport, he was stunned to realize airport authorities didn't notice his error.
“I can’t believe this could happen, especially after all the trouble with the missing Malaysian aircraft. It’s astounding,” he said. “With this plane going missing and people on there with the wrong passport you would’ve thought they would have been a bit more vigilant.”
After spotting the blunder, Clulow had to have his passport sent to Spain via UPS, and paid £70 ($116 / €85) for the delivery.
But the adventure didn't stop there, as the barber says the company accidentally sent the document to Berlin before redirecting it to Benidorm, and he missed his flight home on March 19 because of this mistake. However, Monarch Airline bosses agreed to let him fly back for free the next day.