A 21-year old British man was told he was banned from flying with easyJet because of his name, according to The Mirror. While making final preparations for a trip to Alicante, Kieran Harris was contacted by the airline to inform him that he would not be able to board the flight the following day because of 10-year flight ban, valid until March 15, 2031, due to “previous disruptive behavior”.
The airline had the name Kieran Harris on the list of banned travelers after the man in question was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison for behaving aggressively and abusively, while drunk, on a flight in 2021. “I was gutted. I couldn’t quite get my head around it,” Harris told The Mirror. “I wasn’t on the booking anymore, I didn’t have a seat on the flight, and there was no point in me even going to the airport.
In fact the 21-year old man hadn’t caused any problems in the first place. The root cause of the problem was that he shares the same name with the person who had shown disruptive behavior on an easyJet flight. A coincidence that proved very inconvenient for the man who simply wanted to spend a few vacation days in Spain.
The police turned up at my family home last summer trying to question me. Within five or ten minutes they knew it wasn’t me.
Kieran Harris
With 24 hours to go before his flight, Kieran Harris found himself with no assigned seat on the plane and no access to the airport. After several hours on the phone with easyJet staff to prove his innocence, and subsequently sending his identity papers, the young Briton finally won his case.
This is not the first time that Harris has been mistaken for the convicted man. He told The Mirror that his house was stormed last year by police wearing bullet-proof vests. They had misidentified him after the other individual with the same name was involved in a car accident.
According to The Mirror, the experience with easyJet left him shaken. He does not feel inclined to fly with the airline again as he had to take time off work to go back and forth with the airline over the phone. Tired of all these mishaps, the 21-year-old is considering changing his name.
