Hi All. This week I needed to go to the US Consulate for an emergency passport. I've written a post about what happens if you lose your passport in Paris. Hope this helps future travelers.
www.findingnoon.com

Good info, well written. Thanks!

Very interesting. A lost/stolen US passport took an entire day to replace in 1998 in Paris.

Your situation was different but made me wonder if a lost passport still takes all day to replace.

Good entry, thanks.

I went through the passport replacement nightmare twice in Paris, but in both cases my passport had been stolen elsewhere -- once when I was mugged in Johannesburg and once when my car trunk was broken into on Melrose Boulevard in Los Angeles in the middle of the afternoon. These events took place just one year apart, so you can imagine how warmly I was greeted the second time, since already the first time you are treated as though it is your fault for carrying your passport on your person, even during the transit from the airport, which was my case. Any victim who has ever been made to feel like a criminal will understand the sensation.

Anyway, these events took place more than 14 years ago (i.e. longer than the 10-year validity of my subsequent passport), but I am still on the watch list and am escorted to the security alert room almost every time I enter the United States, where I sit with the people with the forged passports and fake visas for a certain amount of time before being released. I have learned to factor this into my car rental reservation time.

Oh, I should have mentioned that the reason I did the stuff in Paris is because I flew back from Johannesburg on a French laissez-passer (because the U.S. Consulate did not even answer the phone in South Africa -- it was Christmas eve!), and to get back from LA, I still had my French national identity card, which was all I needed to fly to France.

In both cases, my French passports were also stolen (but so much easier to replace!), but it cured me of traveling with both passports in the future, although I used to think it was the wise thing to do.

" I still had my French national identity card, which was all I needed to fly to France."

It's obviously all you need to get into France (or even Britain or even Bulgaria). But I'm fascinated at the thought of turning up to a post 2001 US checkin desk for an international flight, presenting a tiny scrap of paper entirely in French and reassuring the clerk that yes, this a valid travel document, that yes the airline's not going to get fined and that no, her computer's dead wrong.

I love the part where you said you brought every document with you and then some. Glad she got it replaced in time. My only experiences with American Citizens Services at consulates were in Manila (where unfortunately I had to replace a lost passport) and Vienna (where I had extra passport pages added). There was no one else waiting in Vienna when I dropped my passport off or picked it up and the agents at the ACS counter there looked really bored.

kerouac,
The same thing happened to me from 2005 to 2009 because of a passport I lost in Manila in 1994. Some DHS agents at MSP finally figured out how to deflag me (previous agents had tried and failed) and I haven't been flagged since. But I've only lost one passport. For a while I feared that if I lost a second one, they'd never let me back into the country I was also concerned it might be an issue with my Global Entry application but it was never brought up when I interviewed earlier this year.

<i>But I'm fascinated at the thought of turning up to a post 2001 US checkin desk for an international flight, presenting a tiny scrap of paper entirely in French and reassuring the clerk that yes, this a valid travel document, that yes the airline's not going to get fined and that no, her computer's dead wrong.</i>

Actually her computer would say under Passport Exemptions "Holders of a National ID Card issued to nationals of France" so it shouldn't be a problem but it's not a bad idea to even print out a copy from Timatic yourself http://www.iatatravelcentre.com/pass...quirements.htm

Exactly. Getting out of the U.S. is so much easier than getting in.

Cath - this week it was taking a couple of hours for stolen passport holders who could pay in cash, or had a credit card (not AMEX) in their name for covering the fees. The girl with her fiance's credit card, but not the fiance probably spent the entire day there.