British man mistakenly uses girlfriend's passport to fly to Germany and succeeds

Before setting off to Berlin, Randall accidentally took hold of wrong passport

A man was able to fly from London to Germany on his girlfriend’s passport. Although short-haired Michael Randall looks very different from his girlfriend Charlotte Bull, who sports long blonde hair, Randall smoothly passed through all security checks at Gatwick Airport.

He said he accidentally picked up the wrong passport as he left his home in Staines, Middlesex, to travel to Germany early in the morning. However, the authorities in Berlin Shoenefeld, who were informed by Randall himself about the fact that he had traveled on Bull’s passport, issued him a one-day visa after questioning him for 90 minutes.



Randall, 23, said, “It’s outrageous I got that far. EasyJet are meant to check the name against the boarding pass but they obviously didn’t. It’s very worrying as I don’t even look like Charlotte.”

Ms Bull, 34, said, “It was a terrible breach of security, even more so considering how scary current times are.”

The couple live together and had recently returned from a trip to France. Before setting off to Berlin, Randall accidentally took hold of the wrong passport.

Randall had visited Germany to watch a motorbike race. His colleague, who also traveled to the same event later in the day, brought his co-worker’s passport with him. According to an EasyJet spokesperson, the passport details were entered online correctly, but ‘visual identification’ on boarding should have detected the error.



She said, "We are investigating how the passenger was able to travel from London Gatwick with the incorrect documentation.”

A similar incident took place a month earlier, where a tourist claimed he flew from Ibiza to Manchester using a friend’s passport. According to Scott Morgan, 27, he mistakenly grabbed his friend Dominic Carroll’s passport after the two had a night out in San Antonio.

After the security lapse became known, British Airways started a probe. Investigations by Manchester Airport and the Home Office are also underway.

This story originally appeared on The Independent.