British man stuck in Prague after friend flies home using his passport

A British tourist has been left stranded in Prague after his travel companion returned to the UK using his passport by accident.

Steve Vincent, 44, was set to leave the Czech capital yesterday, but was baffled to realise that what he thought was his own passport actually belonged to his friend, Allan Poole, who had flown home to Newcastle the day before.

Vincent told The Independent that the passports had similarly worn covers, and that he believes they accidentally switched while checking into their accommodation.

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Despite carrying the wrong passport, Poole was able to board his flight from Prague’s Vaclav airport to Amsterdam Schiphol, where he caught a connecting flight back to the UK.

“I even failed the e-passport gate in Amsterdam and went to a booth and was waved through,” Poole said.

At the departure gate for the KLM flight from Amsterdam to Newcastle, staff once again let him through, even though his passport did not match the information on his boarding pass.

In all, “the passport was checked or scanned at least four times during the journey but the mistake was never flagged”, says Newcastle’s Chronicle Live.

“No-one noticed or picked up. I only realised when I got home,” Poole told the Independent.

Meanwhile, Vincent, a professor at Newcastle University’s business school, is stuck in the Czech capital awaiting an emergency travel document from the British embassy which will allow him to return home.

He told Chronicle Live that he was furious at the mix-up. “Apparently, all you need is a stolen boarding pass and a random passport to get into Newcastle,” he said.

A spokesman for the British Embassy in Prague said that incidents like this were “not unusual”, the BBC reports.

“It’s quite common actually, to be honest with you, people do travel on other people’s passports accidentally, it does happen,” the official said.

“Border controls sometimes don’t look, I don’t know for what reason.”