Can I potentially sue Aer Lingus?

I was wondering if you could help me please as I had a really nasty experience last Sunday at Dublin Airport flying back to Manchester as I was denied getting onto my flight because I didn’t have my British passport with me.

I am someone that has never forgot my passport in the 30 years that I have had one. I had flown from Manchester to Dublin a few days beforehand with Ryanair and nobody challenged me at any point. Because of this, I just assumed I’d be okay to come home again.

I didn’t have to check in via the normal desk because I just had carry on luggage with me, so I was allowed to go through the security/border Force on as normal and I had special assistance escort with me as well. They took me to the gate and I was waiting at the gate for an hour and 45 minutes as the flight was at 9:55am back to Manchesterand then when it came to boarding, the Aer Lingus staff member told the special assistance escort to put me at the back and then mumbled something that I didn’t hear. When I asked what was going on, I was told that I couldn’t fly because I didn’t have my passport with me and they wasn’t going to accept my driving license. I had connections to make that I had paid a lot of money for and at this point, it sent me into a massive panic attack. The supervisor just got on with her job and didn’t offer me any help despite the fact that I was having a massive panic attack. I have severe mental health problems and I was stuck in a wheelchair because I also have physical mobility problems as well just made it worse. The supervisor then explained to me again that she wasn’t going to allow me to fly because of the lack of passport. I managed to calm myself down enough to tell her that I had had a stroke on the 29th of May last year and I never forgotten my passport before and I had no idea about this rule because I didn’t mean to forget my passport. Unfortunately, the stroke that I had does affect my memory at times, I’ve never done it before but she didn’t care and literally just left me there, now in a worse panic attack that I had before. It felt as if she just didn’t care, in fact she told me to just go to the Irish Embassy and was extremely flippant.

The police were called and I had an officer that was with me trying to help calm me down but at no point was any medical attention called. The Garda officers had told me that they had demanded that I would be allowed to travel on the next available flight because of my mental health. They also explained to me properly what was going on. If it wasn’t for the 2 police officers that were there, I don’t know what I would’ve done because I was on my own and clearly had no one who could help me. The Garda officers also told me that it was at Aer Lingus’s discretion as to whether they would let me travel which made it even worse for me. The supervisor did put me onto a flight several hours later, but by then I had missed all of my connections. I did manage manage to get where I was going to but it affected me by 3 1/2 hours being late to where I was supposed to be going.

There is also some confusion in regards to Aer Lingus Customer Services because I was taken to a gate for the next available flight which at 12:45pm was over 3 hours after I had originally planned to fly. Whilst I was at the gate waiting for the plane that I was scheduled to be on, the customer service agent that was talking to on the phone said that I could be on a much earlier flight (11am) and have told the specialist service assistant to take me to board the flight. Thankfully, that was on the next gate to where I just happened to be, but I was denied boarding because the flight had already closed. At this point, I asked to speak to a manager which they were trying really hard not to do. I did eventually get to speak to a manager who then proceeded to speak to somebody on the Irish side of Aer Lingus. I was told that there was no availability on the 11am flight that the previous customer service agent was trying to put me on. I feel like someone was lying as to the flight that they could’ve put me on. Had they put me on the 11 am flight, it would’ve made things a lot easier as I only would’ve missed an hour out of my time.

The customer service manager didn’t really have any idea of the rules and regulations of her own airline and explain that the policies that they have brought in was only a month or so beforehand. I now believe that that was untrue because I have read that this came into force back in February so really she should’ve known as a manager what the ruling was?

Unfortunately, the 12:45pm flight that I did get on was then delayed to the point that I didn’t get back to Manchester till 2:15pm. This resulted me not being able to get on a train to London until 3:15pm which was then delayed and I eventually got to London at 6:35pm. The distress this is caused is beyond words so I could ever describe. I didn’t mean to forget my passport and as I said earlier, because Ryanair didn’t worry about me flying into Dublin with just my driving license, I didn’t worry about it and I only found out about this once I got to the boarding gate when I went to come home again. I’ve even got a copy of my passport on my phone which I tried to show them so then it would marry up with the driving license that I’ve given them but they weren’t prepared to accept that either.

I haven’t heard from the complaint that I’ve made as of yet, but obviously this is less than 7 working days after I made it so I obviously still have to give them a reasonable amount of time although I don’t know how long that would be?

I was wondering if you might know if there’s any way that I can challenge this potentially on a legal basis because I know that it’s not the law that they’re following and potentially I feel like they are above the law. They caused me significant distress and at no point did they offer any medical help. They only put me on a later flight because the Garda insisted that they do so and even then I query as to whether or not they did actually put me on the next available flight because of the confusion with Customer Services.