Passports Passports Passports...

[400bandit]

Right, the story starts 2 years ago when I went skiing in Austria. I got a new passport just for the trip and it's one of the new style ones. The ski holiday was a coach journey there and back and on the way back we all had to get off the bus and go through customs - Bollocks, couldn't find my passport! Went though and explained that I must have left it in my room. I had to fill out a form to say I had lost it which he told me would get faxed to the passport office straight away and my passport would no longer be usable.
Gets home and then what do you know, it was in the bottom of my case all a long! Damn it!
Go away in the summer of the same year and so need a passport, fill out the form and send it off. It comes back to me saying the old passport was not declared lost (the guy at customs told me it had). Double damn, if I hadn't applied for a new one I could have still used the one I thought I had lost!.
I get the new one and all is good (keep onto the other one too as I use it for ID on a night out)

Anyways, would you believe it I have lost the new one! bugger. I went over to Belgium in the summer this year and went through customs with the old passport and even managed to go through the individual passenger bit at Dover with it no problems.

I'm going skiing again to in January and would have just used the same old aparently now declared-lost-yet-still-in-date passport if going by road but this time I'm flying. I'm going with easyJet, what is their passport checking like? (I'm flying to Geneva if it makes a difference?) Is it just a visual check or do they get scanned?

Otherwise I am going to have to go up to the passport office and get a next day one (which last time I did that cost £96!) and I really don't want to.

Any help will be much appreciated,

Joe
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[chris-red]

You willing to risk your holiday for the sake of £96? You deserve to be penitrated analy at customs, maybe you won't be such a tight arse next time.
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[400bandit]

Why thank you for being so helpful.

as for being a tight arse and risk wasting my holiday, it stands me in £60... So yes, a tight arse I am.

Joe
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Current Bikes 650 Honda Bros, VTR1000 Firestorm // Past Bikes: Sachs Madass 50/110cc - Bandit 400 - FZR750
(+ a XS650 in lots of pieces in my garage and other places...)

[MattEMulsion]

Is it just passports that you have a habit of losing or is it any important documentation in general?

I think that you really should either find the valid one or go and get yet another new one sorted. What happens if they accept your old passport on the way out, but then won't accept it on the way back. I think that you could easily find yourself in the poo, by trying to use a declared lost passport either to get out of the country or back into it.
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[bazza]

[MattHirst]

[Phoenix]

Maybe you should screw your head on a bit tighter, losing 2 passports is just careless. Technically you don't actually need a passport to travel within the EU, just an official form of identification such as a driving licence and I believe an out of date passport is ID but that may only be for 6months after it expires.

As far as I know it's £96 for any passport now since they are Biometric whatever that entails exactly.

[iooi]

[Clanger]

What you should do is, get a small hole punched in the corner of your passport and attach a thin cord to it, and the other to your wrist...that way it should stay with you at all times.

Failing that, get into a new system...always put your passport in one place when you are at home, and transfer that to another 'only one place' when you are away. That way, it will always be there in that place when you go to get it. Never ever put it anywhere other than that determined place.

You can apply this rule to everything else too, at home or away, with things like keys, sticky tape, gloves, whatever...
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[TheDonUK]

Depends, For instance my passport much to my annoyance has a little chip on the last page which gets scanned at most places i have had to present (Airports, Ferry and Eurotunnel), but my girlfriend has an older one from the 90's which is just paper, they seem to just do a visual check. I would be tempted to risk it, but then im a gambler, the safe bet is to get another new one and stop loosing passports...
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[400bandit]

Ok, thanks guys for all the info, I was just checking. As for all those people saying "screw your head on tighter" blah blah blah... I lost one passport, not the other one, I had it on all the time, just a a silly mistake. As for keeping it in the same place, I would like to I think it got lost when I moved (I've moved 3 times in the past 2 years).

The whole thing about traveling in europe with just valid ID is ok apart from Geneva (where I am going ) where you need a passport, damn it. (From easyJets website)

Joe
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Current Bikes 650 Honda Bros, VTR1000 Firestorm // Past Bikes: Sachs Madass 50/110cc - Bandit 400 - FZR750
(+ a XS650 in lots of pieces in my garage and other places...)

[MattEMulsion]

[MattEMulsion]

[lozzypop1]