'My £2,000 holiday to South Africa was ruined because I couldn't prove my daughter's identity'

For Easter this year, I booked a holiday to South Africa. My cousin has lived outside of Cape Town for the past decade and we both have horse-mad daughters, so I thought I’d bring Hope, who is 14, for a 10-day visit.

I booked through Expedia, flying Emirates to Dubai for a stopover and on to Cape Town. A friend had told me we didn’t need visas (true), and nothing came up on Expedia about travel with a child to South Africa, so we headed to the airport, full of excitement, on the Tuesday after the Easter school holidays began.

Everything was smooth sailing until check-in at Gatwick, when the Emirates desk staff asked for an affidavit from my husband, allowing me to travel with my daughter. All I could think to say was: “I’m not divorced!”

“And her full birth certificate.”

What?

My daughter and I have the same surname. She’s 14, and is perfectly capable of speaking for herself. And yet we needed an affidavit - a typed letter from my husband, signed and stamped by a solicitor’s office, in order to travel together to South Africa. The long form birth certificate is to establish the identities of both parents, even if they aren’t both there.

My husband was in the south of France - so I knew I was going nowhere that day. I started to cry - part of me thought if I carry on crying, maybe they’ll waver. But they didn’t.

The Emirates staff told me that, had I booked directly with the airline, a warning would have come up automatically about the need for the long-form birth certificate, and the affidavit if flying without both biological parents.

The person at the desk told me that families bound for South Africa from Gatwick get turned away three times a day, because they don’t have the correct documentation.

They then said had I had the full birth certificate, they might have been able to help. They printed me off an official affidavit letter, which I scanned and sent to my husband in France, where he might get a French notaire to stamp it and then scan it back.

I called Expedia - my call was diverted to Illinois, and then to somewhere in India, where the help desk chap, who was sweet and asked me not to cry, quoted me £600 if I could get the affidavit signed and could fly the next day, but that price was only valid until my flight took off - in two hours’ time. I couldn’t get hold of my husband immediately, and didn’t want to book the flight, in case he couldn’t get the affidavit sorted.

So we just had to get on the train back home, where I rang Expedia again, and spent 20 minutes on hold as the operator on the other end had never heard of South Africa’s travel requirement for children. She had to go investigate and ring me back, saying: “I hope you haven’t been put down as a ‘no-show’, because in that case, you won’t get your money back.”

The holiday cost me £2,000 in flights - and more in Airbnb bookings and horse riding lessons that we missed. Expedia refunded me the £1,600, saying that because of the type of ticket we had booked, there was a £200 penalty per person.

We’ve now re-booked for 14 days in October half-term; the flights cost me £1,400. And the affidavit which my husband rushed around to get last month won’t work when we finally fly to South Africa at October half-term; the letters must be dated within four months of the trip.

I understand why they do this - child trafficking, and custody disputes - but I was surprised that this happened to a child who is 14 and can speak for herself, and because I’m not divorced. The majority of people who travel are legitimate - this was such a waste of time.

Was this just bad luck?

While the Emirates’ estimate of “three times each day” seems high, Ash Jarvis, founder of Best of South Africa Travel, said that this scene is all too familiar in airports: “tour Operators are taking people’s money and not advising them of these strict new laws. People do not realise that if they don’t have the correct documentation, they will be turned away from the check-in desk in the UK.”

“On the night we left for South Africa in March, we came across two families at the BA check-in that did not have the right documents,” said Jarvis. “Their flight was in just under three hours. One family had a courier break into their house in London to get the right documents, while the other rang a friend to break their kitchen door to get their papers in Tunbridge Wells and then drive them to the airport.

“They were in a race: they had both missed the first BA flight and there were only five seats left on the later flight. It was Easter, and the family that “lost” had to wait for three days for the next flight out.

“As a South Africa specialist tour operator, I believe it is my responsibility to alert my clients to all entry requirements. We alert our clients at quotation stage and continue to remind them at a further five or six times prior to departure,” she said, adding that she often texts on the day of departure.

Abi Shaw, founder and head of Bushbaby Travel, echoes Jarvis’s point about the importance of reminding holidaymakers of the document requirements. “We provide details of the necessary information with our clients’ booking documents - ie before they pay a deposit - just in case they are travelling as one parent and they are unsure whether the other parent will agree to sign the affidavit,” she says. “I have had clients change their holiday destination from South Africa to Tanzania specifically to avoid this.”

Shaw adds that, despite the fact that the requirements came into play in 2015, “you just need to chat to BA check in staff at Heathrow to know this continues to be an issue.”

Ash Jarvis adds another note of caution regarding the documentation for South Africa: “Another important thing to remember is that the documents need to be kept with the passports at all times.

“I have had my own clients put the documentation into their suitcase after UK check in - and they had to wait for an hour while the father went through immigration in Johannesburg, collected the baggage, retrieve the files, and then head back to the immigration hall where the rest of the family was waiting; that’s not what you need when you arrive after a 10 hour flight.”