Depends on which country issued it. Care to share?
Canada and the USA are pretty large with a great deal of internal travel; there is not a lot of transit traffic. So unlike big European airports they don’t have transit areas outside of customs. Canada compounds it by having US customs onsite in several major airports. this simplifies US travel since pre-cleared planes can now go to any gate in any US airport instead of having to use customs in the USA.
The oddest I recall is when we stopped in Honolulu on the way from Vancouver to Sydney AUS and had to get off while they refueled the plane, then go through US customs, then airport security again, only to sit in a deserted closed airport at 2AM and wait half an hour to re-board.
My brother just had to do this (he lives in Arizona) and he said the “expedited” passport now takes 4-6 weeks (so he was told by the government).
A bit OT, but …
If you manage to lose your passport, having available a picture of it (on your phone or PC) will usefully mitigate the problem you have created.
(Which is not to say that you’ll be happy about what you’ve done to yourself.)
There’s a story (possibly apocryphal) about a similar problem experienced by a British man traveling from Auckland NZ to London. The flight included a short-ish connection in Sydney, but various “equipment problems” delayed the onward flight several times, to the point where an Australian regulation had to be invoked that all passengers now must pass through customs and immigration.
Many of the passengers were visibly upset, but our hero retained his stiff upper lip - until the time when the immigration officer came to the question: “Criminal record - do you have any criminal record?” to which he replied “No - I am sorry, but I wasn’t aware one was still necessary to visit your country.”
Apparently this did little to expedite his eventual departure.
How? I mean for some situations you could just send in a photo of your passport, but not if you need it for ID in person, like when travelling or even proving your age if you don’t drive.
I think it might be a reference to getting a replacement - I’ve read that having a photo or photocopy with the various numbers expedites getting a replacement at a consulate away from home.
Aha! Yes, that makes sense.
Sorry for the hijack, but…
On my screen, those pictures are often too tiny to see clearly. Is there a way to see them bigger or better?
All of the SDMB thumbnails are 45x45 pixels so quite small.
Best you can do is ask the person with a pic you like if they have a larger image it came from.
In my case I forgot where I got it but here is a larger version:
Here’s a larger version.
Have you tried clicking on the avatar to pop-up the user’s details? That has a much larger version of the same image. See https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole.
Although It looks like @Whack-a-Mole chose a pretty blurry original. If you are going to have a custom avatar, best to resize it to about 300x300 before uploading it. That gives Discourse or the browser something with enough detail to start with.
I lost my passport travelling from Switzerland to the US, and discovered that it was missing in the Frankfurt airport. A fellow from TSA stationed in that airport was called over, he pulled up and image of my passport on his phone, verified the information (I still had my drivers license) and walked me through security to my gate. I did have a long talk with border control back in Boston but they let me in and I got my new passport a few weeks later.
Having a color copy of my passport would have helped speed the situation with the TSA in Frankfurt, but it wasn’t critical to have.