Hi all -

I'm a dual citizen of both the UK and Australia currently living in the UK and I had booked a trip to get back to Aus for a family wedding. I had decided to go via singapore both in an effort to break up the flight and to spend a couple of nights there in the Marina Sands as a nice bday present.

My trip was as follows:

LHR - DXB 0 SIN. Emirates (codesharing with Qantas)
Reconnecting via a Jetstar flight to Melbourne
SYD - DXB - LHR Emirates

The Emirates/Qantas flights were booked with lastminute.com

However yesterday at Heathrow, I was refused entry on the flight by Qantas at the check-in desk as I had only 5.5 months left on my passports (both expiring only days apart) and I am required to have 6. (My wife's passports were fine).

I tried a bunch of different things, including talking with the emirates desk, the qantas desk and lastminute.com, and they all told me the same thing = it's my fault, you should have spoken to the singapore embassy when booking the ticket, and no compensation is available. You need to go home, get a new passport, and book new flights at additional cost.

Naturally I'm gutted, and it's been very stressful, and I have a few questions I was hoping some people can help me with (any help GREATLY appreciated as I have not had much luck getting straight answers from staff).

1) Just how much of my fault is this? Perhaps this is a schoolboy error, and a few of you are scoffing, but I have travelled fairly regularly via this route and others over the last 10 years and I have never heard of this rule. To me, an expiration date is an expiration date and this could all be easily solved in just letting me know before I fly. It's not mentioned in any of the documentation either. You are asked to enter your passport number when booking, and I'm confused why it didn't flag anything there. I have since spoken to a couple of people who said they have tried to book flights online before and when entering the passport number it has validated the expiry date and refused the booking because of the 6 month rule - but for me it allowed it.

2) I tried to arrange flights where I would reconnect in singapore but not actually leave the airport, therefore not thinking that the 6 month rule would apply. But I was informed that the rule is also in place for the airline itself (and apparently most others when flying outside of Europe). Why therefore do they say I should have checked with the embassy when it's their own rule as well?

3) Does anyone know if my travel insurance would typically cover this, or American Express (booked with a rewards gold card).

4) Does anyone else have any extra advice how I can make a claim, or if I have any leg to stand on for grounds to complain? It does seem a shame to say the least to tell me bad luck and to be so out of pocket for a simple error that I was not informed of. If I miss a flight, they do their best to get me on another fight, but for this I just lose it altogether!

In the meantime I have gone home and booked an emergency one day passport for Monday which apparently I'll have by 1pm. I now have the weekend to work out a game plan.

Thanks for your time!