Don Mueang traveller denied Malaysia flight over stamp

Wow, this is what I found out about "souvenir stamps"!

For the record, in 2020 British traveler Tina Sibley was denied boarding for a flight to Phuket by Qatar Airways due to a souvenir Machu Picchu stamp in her passport.

Sibley was forced to obtain an emergency passport and incur significant costs after the unauthorized stamp was deemed to deface the official document.

It seems that it's the airlines blocking travelers at the check-in gate. Because, if an immigration officer rejects your passport at your destination, the airline is legally forced to fly you back at their own expense and also face government fines.

Reference: ICAO Annex 9, Chapter 5 (Inadmissible Persons and Deportees).

The Rule: Under international aviation law, the aircraft operator that transported the passenger to the destination country is legally bound to assume immediate responsibility for them if they are denied entry. The airline must transport the passenger back to their point of origin, or to another place where they are admissible, using its own next available flight.

While there is no single international treaty that explicitly lists "souvenir stamps", your passport is sovereign government property, meaning national legislation determines its validity.

For example, the US, UK, and AUS governments explicitly mandate that only authorized consular or immigration officials may alter the document. Placing a novelty stamp on government property technically constitutes unauthorized defacement, automatically giving other nations legal right to reject it!

Passports are not personal diaries. They are official government documents intended for specific travel purposes.

Bureaucracy , making a mountain out of a molehill.

9 minutes ago, FlorC said:

Bureaucracy , making a mountain out of a molehill.

If idiots are allowed to put childish stamps and stickers in official passports molehills will become mouintains.

Get a souvenir passport stamp and invalidate your passport, pretty simple. Live and learn.

Edited August 18Aug 18 by Cabradelmar

I had that exact stamp in my old passport. You are encouraged to put it in your passport. Countries and airlines are now much more uptight about passports than they ever were.

Tiny tear....denied. tiny fold...denied. it has gone past ridiculous. People have to carry them when they travel. In Japan you are required to always have yours on your person. I even snow ski with mine.

This stamp doesn't do any harm to the passport in any way that would invalid the information or make it hard to read or suspect it has been changed.

2 hours ago, Srikcir said:

Passports are not personal diaries. They are official government documents intended for specific travel purposes.

One does not actually even own their passport. The passport is owned by the government of the issuing country.

A passport is a stateproperty and not yours... You only borrow this passport to identify yourself. That is why you are also not allowed to give it to someone else. they can copy it, but they are not allowed to keep it. So this stamp is not done too. It is nice but in fact it is damaging the stateproperty and now unusable.. The passport is not a souvenir box.

Having traveled to over two dozen countries I have seen these tourist stamps available widely. At least some of the tourist sites, usually government run sites offered a tourist "passport" for free to be used for use in collecting stamps from all over their country.

Pure harassment. Only the passport-issuing country can declare it invalid, and that's it! Bureaucracy in Asia is mostly based on a lack of education among the relevant personnel!

40 minutes ago, 241195_1469957797 said:

Pure harassment. Only the passport-issuing country can declare it invalid, and that's it! Bureaucracy in Asia is mostly based on a lack of education among the relevant personnel!

Harassment? Give us a break. Obviously you feel you can do as you want. New concept for you YOU CAN'T. Get over it.

It is remarkable that people can not easily understand that the entire foundation of official passport stamps ends the day we allow people to "decorate" an official document with stamps that "look real." Then we get to the next level, what if a person decides to decorate their passport with Pokémon stamps? And on, and on, and on to any absurd level.

1 hour ago, Showtime said:

I had that exact stamp in my old passport. You are encouraged to put it in your passport. Countries and airlines are now much more uptight about passports than they ever were.

Tiny tear....denied. tiny fold...denied. it has gone past ridiculous. People have to carry them when they travel. In Japan you are required to always have yours on your person. I even snow ski with mine.

This stamp doesn't do any harm to the passport in any way that would invalid the information or make it hard to read or suspect it has been changed.

(1) "You are encouraged to put it in your passport." By whom? What does that even mean?
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(2) Real-World Discretion: If you are polite, cooperative, and have not committed another offense, Japanese police will usually exercise discretion—such as letting you show a digital photo or escorting you to your room to retrieve the original document—rather than slapping you with a maximum fine.

3 hours ago, goatfarmer said:

The Australian Passport Office includes, as major damage:
"or the document has been tampered with or altered in any way."

I don't see how adding a decorative stamp "tampers with" or "alters" the passport. It is still the same physical passport

"I don't see how adding a decorative stamp "tampers with" or "alters" the passport"

That's because you're deliberately ignoring the very relevant "in any way"

2 hours ago, Showtime said:

I had that exact stamp in my old passport. You are encouraged to put it in your passport

By whom? The person selling it to you?

1 hour ago, 241195_1469957797 said:

Pure harassment. Only the passport-issuing country can declare it invalid, and that's it

No, that is not "it". Immigration officials of any country determine who is refused entry and a defaced passport can be one reason for refusal... that's why the airline officials contacted Malaysia immigration who determined that the stamp invalidated the passport as far as entry into the country was concerned.

5 hours ago, FlorC said:

Bureaucracy , making a mountain out of a molehill.

Idiocy, putting a juvenile, pointless stamp in one's passport is almost guaranteed to make the mountain out of a molehill. They'll be collecting autographs in their passports and writing shopping lists in them next.

I spent many years as a visa and passport officer, and in some countries we would regularly see souvenir stamps in applicants' passports (most commonly from Anchorage, Alaska, where many flights used to stop for refueling before longer range aircraft made that unnecessary). We paid no attention to those stamps, and they didn't affect our decisions at all.

Frankly, I would be more concerned by the Thai immigration officers who use passports like personal memo pads, scrawling lengthy handwritten notes that should properly be in their computer system rather than on a passport page.

While we're on the subject of passport damage, remember the old TM.6 departure card system (finally replaced in 2022) where the Immigration officers would staple it into your passport, leaving behind permanent holes in the pages.

For frequent visitors, those holes accumulated, sometimes weakening the passport’s binding or even causing issues when other countries’ border officials noticed the damage!