London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 14, 2025

Author with British citizenship barred from flight home to UK

Author with British citizenship barred from flight home to UK

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi says Ryanair worker in Brussels wrongly took issue with her travel documents
A Ugandan-born prize-winning author said she was left feeling “numb” after she was stopped from boarding a Ryanair flight from Brussels back home to Manchester.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, a British citizen who has lived in the UK for 21 years, was returning from a literary festival when she was barred from checking in.

The 54-year-old novelist, who won the Windham-Campbell literature prize in 2018 and the Commonwealth short story prize in 2014, said she had been shocked by her treatment.

Makumbi, who has been a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and Lancaster University, was granted indefinite leave to remain in 2012 and British citizenship this year. She applied for a British passport in April and was waiting for an appointment.

She had no issues travelling to Belgium using her Ugandan passport and biometric residence permit. But on Wednesday evening Ryanair staff at Brussels Charleroi airport would not let her check in for her return flight to Manchester, where she lives with her husband and son.

Makumbi said: “I travelled on the same passport, with the same indefinite leave-to-remain card. But then on return the gentleman, the team leader at Ryanair, decided that I was not going to fly because my indefinite leave to remain had an expiry date, which was April this year – but in Britain that expiry date is ignored because it’s indefinite leave to remain. And, actually, immigration ignores it as well. So when I was coming out, Ryanair didn’t bother with it and I showed it to them.

“I tried to explain to this guy, but he just did not even look at me or give me a moment to explain. He just said we’re not going anywhere.”

Makumbi said she was dismissed when she tried to show documentation to prove she is a British citizen, leaving her “in disbelief”. “I explained to them that I’m a British citizen but they were not having it,” she said.

Makumbi went to the British embassy in Brussels on Thursday morning where she says she was treated with “respect and sympathy”.

“They told me: ‘You are absolutely right, you are a British resident and you should have travelled, but you have fallen between the cracks.’ The problem is that the person who stops you at check-in is not an immigration officer so they don’t fully understand the British system of visas,” she said.
Advertisement

“Everybody is of the view that Ryanair was wrong, that Ryanair had no right to take those decisions, that their staff are not fully aware of the nuances in different nationalities.”

Embassy officials advised Makumbi to travel to London via Eurostar, which she was able to do on Thursday afternoon.

Oneworld, which publishes Makumbi’s books, said the news was shocking. “You’d think @Ryanair could simply Google a prize-winning author who has lived in the UK for over a decade, completed her MA and PhD in the UK and is now a university lecturer here,” the publisher tweeted.

Ryanair said: “This passenger was not denied boarding; she did not present herself [or] arrive to her gate at Brussels Charleroi ahead of her flight to Manchester (1 June), nor was her boarding pass scanned through any of the airport’s checkpoints in advance of her flight.”

The airline did not respond to further requests for clarification about why she was unable to check in.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
×