Scottish traveler Rebecca McCarry said a summer holiday to Morocco ended with her deportation, several fainting spells, and a £30 fee to retrieve a passport that was already at Edinburgh Airport’s lost-property desk.
The 22-year-old from Lochgilphead arrived in Marrakech with three friends on 31 July. “Immediately after I got off the plane, I realised I had left my passport on my seat,” she told Mirror. Within minutes she asked ground staff for permission to re-enter the aircraft, but cabin crew refused.
“As time went on, I started to get a bit panicky,” said McCarry, according to the Scottish Sun. She informed an airport employee and was escorted to Moroccan police, who questioned her for roughly three hours. The officers, she said, laughed at her, called her “little girl,” and warned she might wait “five days” for deportation. McCarry, who lives with chronic pain, said the stress triggered muscle spasms that caused her to pass out several times.
After the interrogation she was left in a terminal fast-food restaurant to await developments. Eleven hours later authorities placed her on a flight to Manchester instead of Edinburgh. Her father then drove six hours to pick her up. “Honestly it was terrifying. I did not feel like a person at all,” she said, according to Mirror.
While McCarry was still being processed, passengers boarding the same Boeing 737 for its return leg to Edinburgh found the passport “exactly where I left it,” she said. Ryanair staff handed the document to Edinburgh Airport’s lost-property office.
A Ryanair spokesperson stated that the crew “did a full sweep of the aircraft and the passport wasn’t there” and that McCarry “failed to present correct travel documents and was rightly denied entry to the country,” reported Mirror. At Moroccan authorities’ request, the airline rebooked her “on the next available flight to the UK.”
Back in Scotland, McCarry spent more than a month trying to trace the document. She eventually visited Edinburgh Airport in August and paid £30 to reclaim it. “If you have a bad experience with them, there’s absolutely nothing the customer can do,” she told the Scottish Sun, adding that she is now “very afraid to fly again.”
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