Passport situation

A friend of mine has to travel tomorrow at short notice but has no passport.
Basically he is supposed to travel (fly within the EU) tomorrow morning, but his passport is in an embassy getting a work visa put into it and there's no guarantee about when he'll get it back. Is there anything he can do? Ryanair website says driving license is only acceptable for domestic flights and obviously we've no national ID card thing here. Does anyone know of any other option?

Beruthiel

He could go to the passport office today and plead his case.
I remember last year my mother was in the airport ready to fly out when she noticed her passport was out of date.
She had arrived very early so had the time to hop in a taxi, go to the passport office and get a new one. Yes, it was panic stations, but she caught her flight.

spurious

Contact the embassy, explain the situation and see is there any way they could hurry it along. If they can't, then contact the passport office.

Bluetonic

Beruthiel wrote: »

He could go to the passport office today and plead his case.
I remember last year my mother was in the airport ready to fly out when she noticed her passport was out of date.
She had arrived very early so had the time to hop in a taxi, go to the passport office and get a new one. Yes, it was panic stations, but she caught her flight.

A new passport is probably a bad idea. It will invalidate the old one and no doubt costs will be incurred again to get the visa, the embassy in question might not be able to facilitate you either with a second visa depending on how fussy they are.

Not sure what the solution is, a temp passport can be issued but that is normally for travel when outside the state.

Either way I'm sure the passport office will have a solution.

Embassy have said rushing it through isn't an option. The passport office could do something but it all involves cancelling the old passport, and that would ruin the whole visa thing which has taken months to sort out. What a worst case scenario! Looks like he'll have to pray the passport is released tomorrow and get out to the airport on whatever flight is available.

lasno

You do not say to what country they are flying. If its the UK, then a driving licence is sufficient unless they have opted for online check in with Ryanair.
In that case, pay online for airport check in (€5) or just turn up at airport check in and pay there (€10).

I said it was within the EU and not domestic (UK counts as domestic)

HarryD

Embassy can release passports while Visa applications are been processed,
and request them when/if the application is sucessful.
I'd contact the embassy and ask for the passport for a few days.

Dodge

The embassy that the visa application is at shouldn't need to hold on to your passport. if they're unwilling to return it to your friend, you'll have to cancel the visa application and hope they'll allow him to re-submit the application.

He can't travel without a passport and he won't be issued with a second one. If he is, the visa application becomes null & void.

He already has and they said definitely not. They've said it should be ready tomorrow afternoon but won't guarantee the time, just 'from 3'. Super unhelpful.

crisco10

[quote=[Deleted User];58610896]He already has and they said definitely not. They've said it should be ready tomorrow afternoon but won't guarantee the time, just 'from 3'. Super unhelpful.[/QUOTE]

Thats harsh. I was in that very situation 2 years ago with the South African embassy and after a bit of twisting of arms they relented and let me have my passport while they processed the application. I then just dropped my passport in for an afternoon on my return for them to put my work visa in.

I did have to beg/cajole them into this though, it wasn't standard procedure!

Dodge

They can't legally hold on to his passport. Is he travelling to the EU country tomorrow for work? Get his company to request the passport from the embassy

Nope, it's not work, it's personal.
I know they can't legally hold onto it, but from what he told me, they made it sound like he wouldn't be getting his visa if he demanded his passport back. Just seems so unreasonable that they wouldn't at least guarantee a time to pick it up at.