BA turns away Alex Salmond for ‘Captain Kirk’ alias

British Airways may not be the Starship Enterprise, but that didn’t stop Alex Salmond from channelling Star Trek when booking flights with the airline this summer.

Mr Salmond faced embarrassment when BA flatly refused to let him on the plane at Heathrow because the name on his ticket – belonging to the character played by William Shatner in the seminal science-fiction series – didn’t match that in his passport.

Eventually, after making what Salmond described in the Mail on Sunday as being a few “frantic phone calls”, the SNP MP was allowed to board.

It was all sorted out.

However, a source told the Mail on Sunday things did not go smoothly when he arrived at a check-in desk at Heathrow and presented a ticket with James T Kirk written on it.

“Unsurprisingly, the woman on the desk refused to check him in”.

Mr Salmond’s comments were widely discussed on social media. “I just wanted BA to ‘Beam me up, Scotty”‘.

The former First Minister of Scotland ran into a problem when he tried to travel using the names James T. Kirk.

Mr Salmond previously had bodyguards to back up his story but no longer uses them after he resigned from his post as First Minister after last year’s failed Scottish independence referendum.

The 60-year-old is a member of the official Star Trek fan club and was awarded an honorary “Starfleet Officer” position and a “Membership of Distinction” – the first politician in the world to be honoured in this way.