Oh yeah, absolutely - I’ve flied internationally many, many times (it’s not like my country has many domestic flights, after all), and each time the check-in agent took care to check my passport or passports. I just meant that from a legal point of view, passports are mainly needed upon arrival.
Sure, you can, but I always use my passport when flying anywhere. Not sure why, it’s just my habit.
In fact, I think the air carrier will be forced to return you at their own cost. For that reason, I don’t think any airline will let you fly internationally without a valid passport.
In a file folder marked “passports” with all the other files.
Slight hijack - I’m just curious if various countries have a special immigration/customs line for pilots & flight crews or if you wind up in the same sometimes very long lines as everyone else.
Our are in Stately Mercotan Manor’s vault, deep within the lower level crypt. Along with my coin collection and my copy of Superman #17 (Cover depicts Supie grabbing Hitler and Tojo by their collars and giving them a good shaking).
In St Martin there is a separate line for airline crew, as well as one for residents.
As mentioned above, it’s a souvenir, but once in my case it turned out to be quite important to prove I didn’t owe thousands of dollars in back taxes.
Years ago I received a W-2 from a company in Maryland that I did ongoing consulting work for while living in Indonesia - working on a federal government-funded Indonesian project that the company had received a contract for.
Unnoticed by me, whoever at the company issued the W-2 included a code that said I was a Maryland resident. In fact, I never once set foot in Maryland the entire time I was working.
However, the wheels of bureaucracy being what they are, the State of Maryland decided that I owed them state taxes - not too surprising as the information they received indicated I was a Maryland resident making a significant sum of money. I had no idea this was the case, since I was never successfully contacted about my supposed tax liability.
Eventually, Maryland turned my “debt” over to a collections agency, which expended the energy to track me down in Indonesia and belligerently demand payment. Yeah, that was fun.
Anyway, the only way I was able to get the situation resolved was by creating painstakingly thorough documentation of how I’d lived in Indonesia during the relevant period. To do so, I needed to photocopy all my residency permits from the Indonesian government, many of which were in an expired passport.
If I hadn’t had my old passport with all of my residency permits, I have no idea how I would have proved to the collections agency/Maryland that I was a resident of Indonesia, not Maryland, during the relevant period.
My and Mrs. Homie’s (expired) passports are in one drawer or another in the very desk on which the computer on which I’m typing these words sits. Currently we have no reason to renew them, but we’re looking towards a Caribbean cruise in a couple of years so we’ll get the process going then.
Three is concerning, but two is not unheard of:
Wife and I keep passports and other important documents in a fire-resistant safe in the basement.
Some countries do the stamp thing, some don’t. I’m not sure there’s any rhyme or reason to it.
I got stamped in the U.K. a few years ago, and in Ghana last year.
I keep my passport, stamps and all, in a box with other important documents. That should really be in a fire safe.
I was a little confused, as I know plenty of US citizens with two or three or even four passports – but then realized that article is specifically about US passports. Hearing Trump had three passports seized did not ring any sort of alarm bell in my head.
Same here. I figured he probably had a current (regular) one, an expired one, and a diplomatic one.
Out of curiosity, would he have a Slovene passport due to his marriage to Melania?
What I’m finding is that they seized two expired passports and an active diplomatic one. All were later returned to Trump’s representatives.
Well, what are we supposed to do with them? They’re official government documents containing tons of personal information - I don’t feel comfortable just throwing them into the trash.
As a general matter there are two or three separate processes folks must go through upon arrival in any country: immigration / passport check, then baggage collection and customs inspection, then in many countries, a security / other contraband screening. Once all those processes are done, you’re free to exit the secure side of the airport and enter the public maelstrom of outgoing ground transportation. As such there are two (or three) consecutive sets of lines folks can be backed up in.
As a general matter in most countries for each of the 2 or 3 steps there’s a dedicated line labeled “crew & diplomats” which lets us bypass the vast bulk of the passengers. Although if you arrive just after an A380 or two there might be 30 crewmembers in line ahead of you. Ouch!
In most locations I’ve seen, during the time there are no waiting crewmembers that line is also used as the wheelchair / handicapped / people w horde of children “express” line. Unfortunately, the majority of those sorts of passengers are exceedingly slow / unskilled at doing the required process. And if a couple of those groups are ahead of us it’ll be quite a wait.
Not so bad as waiting with all the other passengers in the main lines, but still tiresome coming as part of your job at the end of what often a long workday.
When leaving a country there’s usually a similar multi-step process of security screening and some sort of immigration departure check, perfunctory though it often is. And for those there’s generally also a segregated crew / diplomats / handicapped line and process.
You didn’t ask, but there’s a separate admin process wherein the airline sends a crew list, a passenger list, and a cargo manifest to the receiving country. And does something similar upon departing that country to return to the US. Very often foreign airport staffers or LEOs are checking our IDs by name & number against the official crew list. I’ve never had a discrepancy pop up, so I don’t know what would happen if there was one. But it’d be a time-consuming PITA for sure.
I mean, you can throw them into a fire or otherwise destroy them if you’re worried (safer than keeping them around.)
Personally, I keep 'em. They’re fun memories, although my most filled passport with a couple sets of extra pages I have apparently lost somewhere along the way.
Same in Spain and Germany, sometimes they just punch a hole in it. I like keeping them as souvenirs too. It looks like I used to be younger.
They’re souvenirs of a sort, a bit like keeping some small denominations of currency from countries you’ve visited. I’ve got old passports with entry visas from countries in Africa, Europe, and east Asia.
When you tire of storing them, they shouldn’t be terribly hard to destroy, either by burning or shredding.
Paraphrasing a comment someone else made in another thread:
Damn!
I thought that’s what descendants are for. I say that as a descendant of one who never threw out a utility bill because they were “official”.