You’re at the Airport and Your Passport Is Gone. Now What?

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You’re on your way home from a great overseas trip. You’re at airport security and doing what pretty much everyone else does, either consciously or subconsciously – checking your pockets for everything you’re probably soon going to need to get through the checkpoint.

• Cell phone? Check ✅
• Boarding pass? Well, it might be on your phone, but maybe you like to have a hard copy too, just in case. Either way, check ✅
• Passport? Che… wait a second. Passport?? PASSPORT??? ⁉️

Wait, where’s your passport?

It’s not in your pocket. It’s not in your carry-on. Your travel mates don’t have it. And whether this unfortunate event happened at the airport going home, or sometime in the middle of your trip, your vacation has just suddenly turned into a whole different ballgame.

I mean, sure, losing your luggage is annoying. Losing your phone is a nightmare. But losing your passport? That’s the travel equivalent of stepping on a LEGO barefoot. Absolute worst-case scenario.

The first thing you need to do

OK, first things first: don’t panic. (Okay, maybe panic a little, but do it internally.) Take a few deep breaths.

The very first thing you need to do is report your passport as missing or stolen.

Of course, your brain is probably screaming, “HOW AM I GOING TO GET HOME FROM A FOREIGN COUNTRY WITHOUT MY PASSPORT?!” which is a fair question to ask. But you also have another potential problem on your hands that you need to nip in the bud: an unreported passport floating around the world is a security problem. If you don’t report it quickly, whoever finds it (or steals it, if you were pickpocketed) could use it for identity theft or other very bad, very “not-vacation-y” things.

The good news

Not that there’s a whole lot of good news about suddenly not having your passport. But if you report it as missing, it’s deactivated immediately. Boom. Done. That means it’ll be useless to anyone else. Including yourself. So before you officially declare it gone forever, take one last deep dive through every pocket, pouch, tote, and mystery zipper in your bag. Make sure your travel mates check again to ensure they don’t have it. Because I promise you don’t want to report it missing and then find it wedged between your dirty socks five minutes later.

How to report your passport as missing or stolen

So let’s say your passport really is gone. Sorry.

Thankfully, reporting a lost passport isn’t nearly as painful as losing one. The U.S. State Department has an entire page with the steps of how to do it. They even give you 3 choices of how to let them know it’s gone, so they can do what needs to be done on their end:

• Online: Use the online tool to submit Form DS-64 online.
• By phone: Call toll-free 1-877-487-2778 (TTY 1-888-874-7793).
• By mail: Use Form DS-64 [PDF, 3.6MB] and mail it to the address on the form.

That being said, you’re undoubtedly thinking you’re going to need a replacement passport, like, yesterday. So your smartest move is usually to contact the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate directly. That way, you can report the loss and apply for a replacement, all at the same time. And happily, in many cases, they can issue a limited-validity emergency passport much faster than a regular one—because the government understands that you’d like to go home now, please.

A couple more things to think about

A couple of extra notes from the “well, that happened; now what?” department:

1. If your passport is gone because you dropped it into, say, the River Thames, congrats on your cinematic mishap – but yay (well, sort of yay), you can also skip filing a local police report. But if it was stolen, getting an official police report can help speed things along when applying for a replacement.

2. You’ll need to fill out two forms: the DS-64 (lost or stolen passport) that we mentioned earlier, and the DS-11 (application for a new one). And if you’re now passport-less and ID-less because you packed your passport and wallet together (bet you’ll never do that again) and everything disappeared at once, don’t spiral. Like we said, just contact your nearest U.S. embassy or consulate – consular officers deal with this exact mess all the time; they can help you sort it out.

What if you find a passport while you’re traveling?

Maybe you aren’t the one who lost their passport – maybe you FOUND someone’s passport. Well done!

Here’s what the State Department says to do:

If you find a U.S. passport in the U.S., mail the passport to:

U.S. Department of State
Consular Lost and Stolen Passport Unit (CLASP)
44132 Mercure Circle
PO Box 1227
Sterling, VA 20166-1227

If you find a U.S. passport while abroad:

Return the passport to the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate.

If you find a foreign passport in the U.S.:

Return the passport to the issuing country’s embassy or consulate.

If you find a foreign passport while abroad:

The State Department doesn’t give directions for that. I would also say to return the passport to the issuing country’s embassy or consulate.

In conclusion

In short: losing your passport is awful, but it’s not the end of your trip—or your ability to get home. It’s just an inconvenient, stress-inducing detour. Eventually, you will look back on that day with more amusement than you feel as it’s happening, and it’ll be one more thing to add to your travel war stories. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I lost my passport in France…?”

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