I’m not sure, but a pusspurt sounds like something you should see a doctor about.
Oh, those poor, poor dears. Really tears your heart out, don’t it? LOL
She should contact the airline customer service also. They need to know she’s now traveling on a different passport than the one she connected to the ticket. If she had to get any visas for this trip, those also are connected to the original (lost) passport.
If you had other means to prove your identity, it’s generally not a problem to return to your home country. A passport is a request to enter another country but not required to enter your own.
Years ago my husband was looking for his passport before a business trip and was beginning to think he’d have to get an emergency one. I was looking through all his bags and coats, then asked him “what book did you read on the last trip?”
He thought I was nuts, but it turned out he’d used his passport as a bookmark and placed the book, unfinished (because he never finishes books, he basically only reads when travelling, it’s annoying) back on the bookshelf.
He took the same book on that trip. I’m still not sure he’s ever finished it.
At least when my son traveled, there was the ability to get an expedited passport if you had an airline ticket within the next few days. He went to the passport office on a Saturday (not sure if they normally had Saturday hours, but that weekend was sort of an “open house”) then he was able to go on the Monday to pick it up - for Tuesday travel. He’d had MONTHS to apply in a timely manner, but nooooooo. The State Department’s website says “You must have travel to a foreign country in the next 14 calendar days or need a foreign visa in the next 28 calendar days. We cannot guarantee an appointment will be available.”.
Such appointments must be at a passport agency, which are not on every street corner; there are only about 24 of them nationwide. We are lucky in that we live outside of Washington DC, so it was an easy jaunt for my son.
Oooooh yeah.
I was waiting at a Post Office a year or so back for something not passport related (ID for work, I think) and heard another visitor who was trying to get a passport for her child. Some form had been signed in the wrong color ink by the other parent. Who was out of the country and obviously not available to pop in and fix things.
Glad to see she was able to get the replacement so fast!! And that’s a reminder to everyone: make sure you have copies of essential documents like Social Security card and birth certificate - things like that are often critical to have on short notice.
Yep. One of the times I’ve wished to strangle my adult daughter was a couple years back. She was in a residential program up in Vermont, and I had mailed her several things including her passport, her SS card, and her birth certificate.
She gave it to a staff member for safekeeping. A few months later, they were closing up that location, found the envelope with that stuff in a file cabinet, and said they were mailing it to her.
She SWORE it never arrived. So, when I was going to be up there for a visit, I arranged an appointment at the post office to apply for a replacment - and I reported the old one lost online.
That was my mistake. The envelope was in a pile of unread mail at her apartment. If I hadn’t reported it, we could have just canceled her appointment.
But a passport is something that can be so useful to have, and it’s pain in the neck to get, so I really wanted her to have one on hand.
While we wait for the original passport to show up, I’ll relate a not completely dissimilar tale about my adult son. He visited over the holidays, and one task he worked on was his visa paperwork for a trip to India. Note that the other grad student he would be traveling with had already completed everything and had his visa in hand. But my son left it until he had just enough time, if everything went smoothly.
It did not. Skipping the boring bureaucratic details, let’s just say I drove him all over town to find somewhere that could take a suitable visa photo. Then he borrowed the car to drive to UPS so he could send his passport to the Indian Embassy in DC, for an emergency expedited visa.
That left him passport-less and he needed to fly within the US. So, no problem, right? He had a driver’s license.
OR DID HE? He says he definitely had had it, because he drives so rarely (he doesn’t own a car in California, where he is a grad student) that he makes sure to double check whether he has his DL when he does get behind the wheel. So, he had his DL when he drove to UPS.
But, no driver’s license could be found. So, off to the DMV (his dad drove) he went to get a replacement.
He gets to the front of the line, explains what he needs, the clerk looks him up, and … HIS DRIVER’S LICENSE HAD EXPIRED!!!
So he was not entitled to get a replacement license. Instead, he had to take the entire driving test, both the written and road test. Usually in Hawaii it takes weeks to schedule one. Miraculously, they not only had a same day opening, but were able to administer the tests immediately.
Of course, he had not studied for the written part and had barely driven over the past few years, but somehow, he passed both tests.
We now know it was a blessing in disguise that he lost his DL, as he had no idea it was expired, and trying to do things with an expired license could have gotten him into a jam at some point.
Anyway, he was able to fly with his temporary license, his passport with the Indian visa miraculously was returned promptly, and his new permanent driver’s license is sitting on my desk. I’ll mail it to him in California next week, when he is due back from India.
Kids …
Some of the post raises an interesting question. If you can prove you are a US Citizen or legal resident, through Real ID or other method, can The US keep you out if you don’t have a passport?
That’s an excellent outcome!
I would have bet big cash money that your friend was FUBAR.
No, a passport makes it easier for everyone but a citizen can’t be denied entry. They’ll make a good faith effort to get you identified and get you home on temporary documents.
How embassying.
LOL.
I swear, times like this, I think it ought to be legal to pummel them.
I bought my daughter a fireproof (fire-resistant) pouch to store those critical documents, and told her to always keep it in a specific spot. She hasn’t needed them since then, as far as I know, and I think she actually DOES know where that pouch is. We’ll find out in April, when she’s joining us in upstate NY for an eclipse-viewing party, and we might make a jaunt into Canada for a day trip.
As a side note: for anyone getting or renewing a passport, get a passport CARD at the same time. It doesn’t cost much extra (30 bucks?). It fits in your wallet. It’s legal for air travel within the US (in case your other ID is not RealID compliant; mine is not). It’s valid for surface travel into Canada and Mexio, and for cruise travel to the Caribbean.
Well, I did get her to the airport in plenty of time, and she is presently in Paris enjoying herself immensely! I collect her at O’Hare this coming Saturday afternoon. Hopefully, that will be boringly routine. LOL
I will second that this is a valid procedure!
Retrace your exact steps.
Yay!!
SIL owes you for all the help. Big time.
I strongly agree, but there are mitigating circumstances in this case. Her Paris trip was booked about 3 months ago. In the interim, she had to book a trip to Greece, which she did at my place in the middle of January. I remember taking a picture of her passport and uploading it to American Airlines. I then purposefully handed back her passport. She didn’t discover it until this past Thursday night, fully a month later. Since she had to drive home with it, I made it a point to tell her to thoroughly search her car. She said she did but, since she left her car at my place and I have her keys, I think I’m searching it again as soon as I get home. You never know.
And I owe you guys for all of your help. BIG TIME!
Even though I do have a passport, I pretty much knew nothing about all of it until now. The closest I’ve come to international travel is flying over international waters on my Hawaiian trip.
More off-topic venting about my son: He had mentioned MONTHS before that he wanted to take a trip to Europe. I told him he should apply for his passport.
He did nothing.
I told him “go to the UPS store and get passport photos taken”. He did that. And nothing else.
It gets to be a month before he wants to travel. “Have you asked for the time off work???”. “Uh, no.” “THEN DO THAT!”. He did.
A week before he wanted to travel, I reminded him “You NEED TO GET THAT PASSPORT”. He called to make an appointment - this was on a Tuesday. He came back to me and said “I need to have an airline ticket booked”.
I said “So book one!” (note: aside from the cost, this wasn’t that huge a deal, as he could have flown into pretty much any city in Europe, as his plans were not set in stone).
On the Wednesday, I asked if he’d booked his ticket. He said “Um, there was some kind of problem with my credit card”. I said “THEN USE YOUR DEBIT CARD”.
By Thursday, he had done so. And he got his appointment at the passport agency’s open house on the Saturday. That day, I did my only “hands-on” assistance: I drove him downtown to get there (he could have taken Metro, but that doesn’t run as frequently on weekends) and while he was there I went to a currency exchange and got him some Euros to put aside for emergencies.
Mission accomplished; he had to go back on the Monday to pick up the passport. I dropped him off at the airport Tuesday, and off he went. Planning and travel are chronicled here. He actually did fine, once he was there, even when he had trouble booking some planned train trips - he handled all the obstacles quite well.
You are a very patient lady! LOL
I have a lot of “travel anxiety”, so I’m the exact opposite of your son. Everything is meticulously planned down to the smallest detail, and there is always a “Plan B” in reserve if, somehow, something goes wrong. I know for a fact that there is no way I could have handled that mess the way you did. Kudos!!
I had a panic about my passport at LAX in 1988 at the scanning machine. My group leader casually said “OK everyone put all your stuff from your pockets in the machine.” I put my passport in there; it fell between the rollers and got jammed between them and the exit part. They had to pull the machine apart to retrieve it. You can believe I use precautions now.
Two missing passport stories:
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Two days before an international trip, I go to retrieve my passport from the place I usually have it stored, the bottom drawer of my set of drawers. It’s not there. I go crazy tearing the rest of my house apart for all the places it could have been. By some miracle, several hours later, I tilt the drawers while the bottom drawer is open and it comes clunking out. There was an open space at the back of the drawer and it had slid through there into the bottom of my cabinet, along with several other important papers. It was only by tilting the drawers while the bottom drawer was open that it would move and reveal itself. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t coincidentally perform that exact series of steps.
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A friend of mine was going on an international vacation and similarly can’t find his passport. Spends the next several days systematically tearing his place apart before finally giving up and going the emergency passport route like OP. Several months later, he goes to scan an important document, opens the bed of his scanner… to find his old passport just lying there.