Following the incident where a passenger was denied getting on a flight to Bali, Indonesia, after his passport was found to have a tear, the Department of Transportation has warned airlines that any deliberate tampering of passengers’ passports by their personnel will result in sanctions.
“If we see any such incident, if anyone does such nonsense, sanctions will be imposed on both the airlines and their personnel,” DOTr Secretary Vince Dizon said in an online news report.
Until now it wasn’t clear how the passenger’s passport got torn, leading to speculations that it was mishandled by airline personnel. The fact that there have been other cases of what is now being called “punit passport” is making more than a few travelers uncomfortable.
As a result, airport personnel are now also prohibited from directly touching the passports of passengers.
We aren’t exactly sure what’s happening here, but we hope this isn’t a case of some people deliberately damaging the passports of passengers for whatever reason, whether to ask for money to make sure they can still make the flight, or to deliberately make them miss their flight, or just out of plain spite, or whatnot.
Passports are made of very durable materials. It isn’t easy to damage them. It would have to take someone acting intentionally to cause tears. And owners of such passports aren’t likely to be doing it themselves since there is nothing to gain from such an act.
Superficial damage should also not count as something that can render the entire passport useless. As long as the image of the passport owner is still recognizable, as long as the passport number and the important dates are still legible, and as long as the safety features still work then the passport should still be accepted.
With this warning from the DOTr out we hope that passengers will take extra care in securing their passports, and that those who for one reason or another like to render such documents unusable will think twice before they do so.