What happens if you land somewhere abroad and have forgotten your passport?

A friend flew abroad (won’t say where) with his wife’s passport by accident. They weren’t checked on arrival, and didn’t realise until a few hours later. On departure, the other pilot sorted out all the formalities and went through to airside, where he pushed the passports back through the fence. Walking past with two (closed) passports in hand, the policeman was happy with “everything’s already been sorted”.

I’ve been past the douanes at LFAT a few times saying I was just going the plane quickly and would be back. Obviously, I did go back and show my passport. Do they check ID even for local flights?

John Simpson, the BBC world affairs editor, had his passport thrown in a river by an African warlord, and spent the next few months with a typewritten letter from a Belgian official – as long as it looks official it works?

The authorities are usually more worried about people entering the country, rather than leaving it, unless looking for particular individuals. ID cards make Schengen possible: instead of checking passports on entry/exit, cards (which have to be carried) can be checked at any time in any country.

Capitaine wrote:

ID cards make Schengen possible

Passports work, too. Denmark also has no national ID cards, and is a Schengen member. They are just a bit less practical to carry around

Many years ago. I was flying a trip with a friend.

On landing in the UK, we were told that Special Branch (police) didn’t have a copy of our GAR form and they were coming to check us out, and we’d have to wait for them in the terminal. My passengers face dropped and I asked him what’s wrong. He’d left his passport in his “Go bag” by the front door, meaning to take it with him as he left, but had forgotten it. So he didn’t have his passport with him.

While waiting for Special Branch to arrive he arranged his wife to fax him a copy of it (before scanners were widespread and before smartphones were popular). Special Branch asked for everyones passport and he handed them the fax page. It was a poor copy obviously with the photo largely unidentifable. They looked at it, turned it over to look at the back (blank page) an didn’t way a word. At the end there was no mention of it, and all passports and documents were handed back (and we got an ill informed lecture about GARs).

Of course the UK and Ireland are in a common travel area, and in theory no ID is need for travel between them at all.

We went from there to the Channel Islands. We had to fill up a GAR on arrival and he was able to fill up all the details from his fax copy, but didn’t make it obvious that he was doing so. They were happy with the completed form and didn’t ask to see any passports directly.

From there we flew to France. On arrival the customs post was empty and we simply walked pass it. Well there was a two way screen, but there was noone visible around and noone came out of the office from behind the screen. My friend was delighted. He was now in Schengen and didn’t have to worry about his passport for another week until we needed to leave again. Plenty of time to get it DHLed to us in Spain where we were spending a week.

But on returning to our aircraft two hours later, the customs post was now manned and the smiling officer asked to see our passports. I don’t know if this was the customes officer simply doing our arrival checks now (knowing from our flight plans that our stay was temporay at the field and it was more convienent for him to do as we left rather than arrival) or just doing a random check. My friend gave him his fax copy of his passport and also gave him his drivers licence. He looked at them, handed them back, smiled and said “Have a good trip”.

I landed last year in Weeze and realized i had forgotten all my documents, wallet etc. except one credit card.
As it was inside Schengen nobody asked for my documents to get land side. But problems came when I tried to book the rental car I had reserved. They would not let me rent the car even though I had a picture on my phone of the driver license.
As Weeze is a Ryanair destination there is Bundespolizei. A very nice officer there spend close to an hour to contact the Danish police and establish that I did indeed have a driver license. He then wrote a formal confirmation letter that was accepted by the rental company.

I think the usual procedure is to have you held airside until you can show your passport, through access to the consulate/embassy or otherwise. If you don’t, they just send you back to where you came from.

Presumably if some medical issue arises, it relies on the laws of the country and perhaps the discretion of local immigration officials to admit you into the country. That may require proof of medical insurance documents or ability to pay as well.

If you’re on a Intra-Schengen or Intra-CTA flight then I’m generally not expecting people to be held on suspicion of illegal immigration.

I presume countries like Switzerland which is inside Schengen but outside the EU Customs Union can still hold you until customs officials are satisfied you’ve followed the due process on goods (e.g. not above limits and appropriately declared and taxed if so, etc).

But if lots of people have historically rocked up at any airport without the right paperwork, the firmer the officials – they’ve heard all the stories and all the blagging and all the excuses. It’s unlikely you’re going to get any nicer treatment.

As an aside – if you don’t carry a valid photo ID, your pilot’s license is invalid. So, at least in theory for a Brit (remember, there isn’t a photo ID in the UK), you couldn’t just ‘fly back’ from L2K, as you now are not legal to operate the airplane.

pmh wrote:

I landed last year in Weeze and realized i had forgotten all my documents, wallet etc. except one credit card.
As it was inside Schengen nobody asked for my documents to get land side. But problems came when I tried to book the rental car I had reserved. They would not let me rent the car even though I had a picture on my phone of the driver license. As Weeze is a Ryanair destination there is Bundespolizei. A very nice officer there spend close to an hour to contact the Danish police and establish that I did indeed have a driver license. He then wrote a formal confirmation letter that was accepted by the rental company.

I wonder how the officials in either country could have been reasonably sure of who you are, given that all you had to demonstrate identity was a credit card? That aside, I’m generally happy that foreign officials cannot access (or affect) my driver’s license record by any means, regardless of what other ID I might be carrying.

172driver wrote:

if you don’t carry a valid photo ID, your pilot’s license is invalid. So, at least in theory for a Brit (remember, there isn’t a photo ID in the UK), you couldn’t just ‘fly back’ from L2K, as you now are not legal to operate the airplane.

I think you mean that there is no national identity card issued in the UK, not that there is no government furnished photo ID that is valid for this purpose. Otherwise you could never fly

Peter wrote:

It does incidentally mean that a Brit without a passport (yes there are some, though nowhere near as many as in some other countries) cannot fly an N-reg

A Brit or anybody else who does not have any form of US issued photo ID. Any US federal or state government issued photo ID is acceptable regardless of residence or citizenship, but of foreign IDs only a passport is acceptable. I guess it makes sense given the fairly uniform application procedures for passports worldwide.

I guess many more Brits have a passport compared to Germans. In Germany I reckon the majority (!) of the population doesn’t have passports. The ID cards (“Personalausweis”) on the other hand are compulsory, so everyone has them. There is a widespread (but wrong) belief that one has to carry them in person at any given time to be able to identify yourself to the authorities when requested. So I hazard guess that more Germans are able to identify themselves via official documents at any given time than most other people.

Incidentally, without the ID most other documents become invalid. Including the PPL or my physician identity card. I always carry my ID but only took the passport when travelling to Israel so far (the only non-EU place I’ve been to, except Switzerland which is in the EU in all but name)