I was one of the tourists denied boarding on a BA flight to Greece amid chaos at Heathrow

I should be in Greece by now. Instead I was turned away at the British Airways check-in desk at Heathrow yesterday.

Why? Because the ‘track and trace’ QR code one now needs to enter the country had not arrived in time, despite my having an email confirmation from the Greek authorities that said (or seemed to say) that I would be permitted to board.

I wasn’t the only one. An uneasy queue was assembling at the supervisor’s desk of the airline at around 8am in the morning when I arrived to check in for my 10.10 flight to Santorini. Children were crying. Parents were pacing, phones were ringing, sheets of paper clutched in fists.

There was no-one from BA’s ticketing office available, and I gave up after 14 minutes of being on hold on their helpline. With no salvation in sight, I took the Tube home, defeated, incandescent and financially bruised, to sift through a melee of inconvenient and extortionately expensive back-up plans.

In order to enter Greece at the moment, travellers are required to fill in a “passenger locator form” (PLF) at least 24 hours before arrival so they can receive a QR code to show authorities on arrival, either printed or on a smartphone. This is so travellers can be tracked if necessary, which is a perfectly reasonable system in times of a pandemic.

But here lay my problem. It was a fairly last-minute trip anyway, and the agency I booked through on Kayak, the flight comparison website, had failed to notify me of this requirement in advance. Neither had BA. I had therefore filled in the PLF form within, not before, the 24 hours prior to my departure and I hadn’t yet received the QR code.

“Sometimes it arrives instantly”, said a fellow passenger, who was navigating a similar ordeal, with a faint whiff of hope. In my case, it arrived 10 hours later.

BA wouldn’t move my booking back a day, placing the blame at the online travel agency's feet, but was offering a new one-way flight to Santorini today for the princely sum of £760.

Naively, I’ll confess I hoped, in these challenging times, that Britain’s flag carrier, who I’d already paid £550 for the return flights, might be willing to help me out here. But it wasn’t to be. The moment you get a third party involved when you’re booking flights, you wave farewell to any chance of great service; I should know that by now.

My only other option today, now that I have the sacred code, would be via a 12-hour multi-airline itinerary with Wizz Air that stops at two Polish airports to reach Santorini, which honestly I would have taken if it didn’t interrupt my weekend work shift. In short, I’m stuffed.

What I did have in my possession when I turned up to check in yesterday was an automated email from the Greek authorities confirming my PLF submission that stated: “If travel departure begins prior to the day of arrival, travelers are allowed to board after showing the confirmation email (and not necessarily the QR code which is scheduled to arrive during their trip).”

It seemed clear to me, as I stood at the airport, that this email would suffice. The BA agent informed me that it would not, and that I wouldn’t be able to travel. With the clock ticking and panic rising, I showed the supervisor the Greek government’s website, which states: “All travelers must complete their PLF until the day before entering the country,” but also: “Travelers boarding or embarking on the previous day of the arrival will be allowed to do so upon showing the confirmation email.”

Presented with the evidence, the BA manager called his manager, but the answer was the same. No QR code, no travel. It’s seemingly becoming such a problem that a sign has been erected up in Heathrow’s Terminal 2 which states as such – not that it’s terribly useful by the time you’ve already arrived.

Another group at check-in had a different problem; their QR codes had come through for the parents but not the children. The mother was frantic and her sons were in floods of tears.

The same had happened to a family earlier this week at Gatwick, as reported by the BBC. A mother and her children were denied boarding an easyJet flight to Greece because the code didn’t cover all three of them.

“It's such a shock [...] I'm a lawyer, so I'm used to form-filling and small print,” she said. “But with these, it's so difficult to understand. The website is unclear. The other couple who were refused boarding hadn't even heard about the forms.”

Greece’s embassy in London told the publication: “Sometimes the airlines are asking for different codes for each passenger. Only one form per family is needed.”

At least one passenger who was turned away from my flight yesterday morning had no idea they’d need a QR code to board. And a glance at recent social media posts indicates that this is a key problem: many travel companies simply aren’t informing customers of this requirement.

I am a travel journalist, for heaven’s sake. I’m half furious with myself for getting this wrong and half furious with the confusing nature of the Greek authorities’ wording and BA’s failure to be more helpful.

The airline was diligent enough to send me a text two days ago to inform me that it was a busy flight and that I’d be required to check my hand luggage. A heads up on what is an indisputably confusing new entry policy would have been nice. Expecting me to cough up £760 for a new flight is beyond the pale.

I’ve since been informed by BA that the travel agency had allegedly failed to add my email address to the booking, meaning the automated email that BA sends to passengers regarding the Greek entry requirements, with the link to the online form, never reached me.

I did try, incidentally, to book directly with BA onto the same flight I found on Kayak, but it was £150 more expensive on BA.com, and I didn’t bite the bullet.

Elsewhere, Tui, the UK's largest tour operator, has confirmed that “a small number” of its customers have fallen prey to the same scenario and been denied boarding to Greece, but maintains that they notify passengers by email and text message of this PLF requirement in advance of their departure.

EasyJet also tells me: “We know that [Greece’s entry requirements] are different to how many of our customers are used to travelling, which is why we are providing clear guidance on what customers must do to prepare for their flight and are notifying them of any requirement to complete a health declaration form when booking and ahead of their trip via email, SMS and via our Flight Tracker.”

As it stands, given I’m not in the mood to hand over another wad of cash to BA, I can’t get to Santorini, so I can’t use my return flight either and those tickets were a waste; as was the time I took off work. I’m jolly lucky I was able to cancel my accommodation in Greece at no cost. I imagine plenty of other holidaymakers won’t be so fortunate.

It’s a risky time to be travelling at the moment, and an awful lot can go wrong, whether that be in or out of our control. Choosing to venture abroad anyway is a gamble we must be willing to pay a forfeit for.

But one thing is for certain: the travel companies that go that extra mile on customer service in these muddled times are the ones who will come out of this crisis on top. I’m in no way suggesting that British Airways should have let me check in yesterday without the code. Nor were they under any obligation to get me on the next flight when the code came. But they could have - there were seats available - and I won’t forget that.