An American family living in Albania have been left thousands of dollars out of pocket and minus one passport after a series of errors, they say, were caused by Air Albania, the country’s national flag carrier.
The Potwin family, originally from the US, have lived in Albania for several years and are employed locally with their children attending a local school. On 27 June, the family arrived at Tirana International Airport to travel back to Boston with a connection in Istanbul.
After checking in and getting their boarding passes, they approached passport control, where they ran into an issue. The system was not correctly recognizing the details on the three passports belonging to the wife and two daughters who had new documents issued in October 2021. The police officer attempted several times and at different terminals to enter the information before taking their passports off them and going to passport control offices to input the data manually.
After an hour of standing at border control and with minutes to go before the plane took off, the officer returned and handed them the passports, telling them everything was ok.
The family proceeded to the gate and handed the four passports, and four boarding passes to the gate agent. The last passengers to arrive at the gate, the agent, while holding the passports, escorted the family onto the tarmac and towards the plane. At the bottom of the stairs, she handed the husband the passports and passes, and he placed them back into his bag before taking a family photo and boarding the plane.
Upon arriving in Istanbul, no one asked for passports or boarding passes, and it was not until they sat to eat lunch that they realized that one of the four passports and boarding pass stubs was not handed back to them. The husband proceeded to alert staff working for Turkish Airlines and Air Albania and explained the situation to multiple members of staff, as well as presenting various forms of ID for his wife, including a photo of her lost passport.
The staff in Istanbul also contacted Tirana to ask if the passport had been handed in, but they said it had not.
His wife was approved to travel from Istanbul to Boston with her US driving license, but Turkish Airlines said that as her boarding pass was not scanned in Tirana, she could not fly until Air Albania updated her status as flown. This took over two hours, meaning they missed their connecting flight.
The husband even managed to get a photo of the Turkish Airlines screen, showing her status had not been shown as updated. The agent then told them that the next flight to Boston was the following day and would cost over $1000 in fees to transfer.
The delay also meant that the family had to find accommodation overnight, but as they were missing one passport, they could not leave the airport. Therefore, they had to pay $200 to stay in an airport lounge, sleeping on the floor overnight. They were not even allowed to get their luggage to have a change of clothes.
The family have contacted Air Albania multiple times by phone and email to ask for the whereabouts of the passport and for compensation for the series of mistakes that led to them having to spend over $1200, plus the cost of a new passport.
“We are flying back home to Albania on 6 August from Boston to Tirana and would like this situation resolved as soon as possible. The extra $1266.84 has drastically affected our summer vacation budget, and we’ve had to cancel many extended plans, reservations and events with family & friends,” they wrote in communications with Exit.
One email response from Air Albania customer care said, “We inform you that after all the necessary verifications have been carried out with the airport staff from where they provided one thing is 100% sure: that there is NO WAY that the passports would have been given back by the pax-service agent to the passenger, at the aircraft stairs, as you are claiming.”
It continues that they are “pretending” to have encountered problems and lied about boarding pass issues.
“Looking at all the facts, there are no mistakes from Air Albania staff whatsoever in this case,” they write, stating that it is up to the passenger to be responsible for their passport and not hand it over to anyone, even the police.
Exit also contacted Air Albania to ask about the family’s plight but received a curt response.
“We would like to inform you that without a special power of attorney edited by a notary, you can NOT ask for information on behalf of the passengers, even your family. We inform you that ONLY the passenger himself or a person authorized by the passenger with special power of attorney edited by a notary has the right to request information or compensation.”
Requests from the Potwin family for CCTV footage to be checked to verify their version of events have been ignored by Air Albania, they told Exit.
“In the last 24 years of being in the military, a travelling chef and now an international educator, we’ve taken our fair share of flights. Never have I been so rudely accused in person or via customer service email that we 1. Lost our passport, 2. Lied about it being lost on the tarmac & 3. Been made to stand at a counter for 8+ hours while my kids slept on the floor just to get back to our family,” said Mr Potwin.
He added that “Funny how my wife made it onto a plane with no boarding pass & no passport and all the way through Istanbul security without ANYONE noticing? It’s quite obvious that multiple failures were made along the way.
Now we’re just hoping to make it home safely, and that was not flagged for extra searches & questioning on the flights home.”
