As a service to the community only and because I regard this example of incompetence as potentially wide-ranging and distressful, and if any of you are thinking of travelling to the US and have the misfortune to book your trip with IBERIA, I thought I would share this with you. When I arrived at check in at Granada airport the IBERIA person refused to check me through to the USA, arguing (they also did in Madrid IBERIA) that the passport did not permit entry to the USA as it was "not machine readable". I argued that this was wrong and that it was machine readable and complied with the dates in the US Border regulations (http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/..._mach_read.xml) and that had it not been valid the US Border authorities would not issue the ESTA (entry) approval. She said she would confirm this with another IBERIA person. She apparently did so and then refused to issue the boarding card to the US as the passport was not legal for the USA and I would be refused entry. She told me to get to the police in Barajas and get another one (and another ESTA of course) or stay on the ground. She said she "had seen many passports with this problem and that everyone had to get a new one in Barajas"). After a very stressful flight to MAD, I ran around trying to find the police station in Terminal 4 (I had been given the wrong terminal information by the girl in GRX) and decided to go to IBERIA to check. Here the story was different: the passport was not valid but this time because it did not have a chip although it now WAS machine-readable! I then went to the carrier, American Airlines, to see if the information was correct about the passport - where I was told there was indeed NOTHING wrong with the passport and that "IBERIA regularly give passengers the wrong information about the machine readable passports and turns them back from the US planes". That would also mean that IBERIA in GRX and MAD at least have given people like me a stressful journey and the extra expense of buying a new passport for nothing quite a number of times according to the check in girl or indeed have merely refused boarding. It is, of course, illegal not to issue a boarding card to a person with the correct documentation and this is clearly at best lack of information at check in level or, as it seems, a wider issue of incompetence. I hope the information proves useful for any of you about to travel to the US. IBERIA will refuse boarding if they think, or rather, interpret your passport is not valid; they are most probably utterly wrong in that assumption but you will still be left on the ground. Check your passports first but check also with the US Borders page as the information you will receive from IBERIA is at best misinformed and, at worst, just indicates several of the staff are unable to read. But with stressful and expensive consequences for the passenger. Oh yes, and no problem in the US: the girl at Customs stamped my machine readable passport and said "That's the third case I have heard today with IBERIA. They do it all the time. THe clever passengers travel with airlines who know the score". I leave you with that sage piece of advice.