What do you do when your passport runs out of pages?

Simon Calder answers your questions on overused passports, how much compensation to expect for expenses due to train cancellations, and why Eurostar can’t just run from Ebbsfleet instead

Though it is a compelling destination, taking frequent trips to Spain can leave travellers with the problem of a full passport (Getty/iStock)

Q What happens when there are no pages left to stamp in a UK passport but it hasn’t expired? We travel to Spain a lot. I have extra pages on a new passport, but my wife doesn’t on her current passport.

David B

A If you plan to travel no further than the European Union and the wider Schengen area (including Iceland, Norway and Switzerland), don’t worry about your passport filling up. After Brexit, the UK asked for citizens to become “third-country nationals” in the eyes of the EU.

The Schengen Borders Code insists: “The travel documents of third-country nationals shall be systematically stamped on entry and exit.” Each visit to the zone uses half a passport page. But if your wife’s passport is completely full, frontier officials are required to provide an additional sheet of paper to which the stamps are applied.

The big problem, though, is if you wish to travel beyond Europe to a country that requires one or more blank passport pages for its frontier formalities; according to the Foreign Office, India, Lesotho and South Africa all demand two clear and adjacent pages.

From autumn this year, if all goes according to plan, the European Union’s entry-exit system will come into effect. Manual passport stamping will be replaced by electronic registration (but not for those travelling to Cyprus, which is to remain outside the Schengen area).

Meanwhile, the start of a new year is an excellent time to check the family’s passport dates – in particular, that they comply with the Schengen area rules. To restate these: on the day of entry to the EU, your passport must have been issued in the past 10 years; and on your proposed day of exit it should have at least three months to run.

January is an excellent time to renew a passport – and to decide if it is worth paying an additional £11 for 16 extra pages in a “jumbo” version. For those venturing no further than Europe and North America, the upgrade is probably unnecessary.

Airline passengers have gold-plated rights; unfortunately this isn’t the case for those who choose to travel by rail (Simon Calder)

Q I was caught up in Saturday’s Eurostar fiasco, when all the trains from London to Paris were cancelled. I managed to get a space on a ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe yesterday, travelling on by train to Paris. But I had to pay for a hotel in Brighton on Saturday night so I was close to the ferry, plus a taxi to Newhaven and all the train fares. How do I get refunded for these extra costs?

Veronique B

A Mostly, I am sorry to say, you won’t be reimbursed. Had it been an airport rather than an international railway station that closed for 24 hours, with all arrivals and departures cancelled, you would be covered; airline passengers have gold-plated rights. Even if the carrier is not to blame for the cancellation, it has a strict and unlimited obligation to get the passenger to their destination as soon as possible, even if it costs hundreds of pounds. And while the traveller is waiting, all meals must be provided – along with hotel accommodation as necessary, with no cap on the cost of a room.

For rail passengers, there is nothing like such generosity. For those who are stranded (ie away from their home city/country), Eurostar should cover the cost of a hotel – though the fact that yours was in Brighton rather than London may require some explaining. The maximum payable for a hotel room is £150, which I hope covers your bill. On top of that, Eurostar allows a reasonable £50 per person for meals every 24 hours.

Let’s now look at the cost of your trip. Eurostar will hand back the cost of your ticket from London to Paris, which I am guessing will be in the order of £75. I imagine the total cost of your journey could be twice as much. I doubt that Eurostar will be prepared to make up the difference. Travel insurance, if you had some for this journey, may possibly help out. Otherwise, you will have to put it down to experience.

Next time, there’s no need to take a taxi. Brighton has an excellent and reasonably priced train to Newhaven, taking 40 minutes. I hope the journey was in some way enjoyable, and that the coming year proves more reliable in terms of transport.

Ashford International has good domestic links to London, Kent and Sussex, but no immigration or security services (Simon Calder)

Q To avoid mass cancellations like yesterday’s, why can’t Eurostar simply run from Ebbsfleet International station in Kent? The trains could come in from France, drop off passengers and pick up more.

Neil K

A Tens of thousands of Eurostar passengers have had their new year travel plans torn up thanks to flooding on the HS1 line. The exact location: the tunnel where the line dives beneath the Thames between Essex and Kent. On one side: London St Pancras International. On the other: Ebbsfleet International, which until 2020 was a regular stop on the line to the Channel Tunnel and France.

Your suggestion has plenty of appeal. Although nothing like the full service could be run (there being only two Eurostar platforms), anything to reduce the upset among passengers desperate to get home would be worth trying.

Another option might be to serve the better-connected Ashford International, which has good conventional rail links with London, Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

Neither of them is realistic, I’m afraid. Were the two Kent stations in full working order, a plan could be cobbled together. But these are locations that have been mothballed and remain international stations only in name. To reboot the security set-up, get the immigration formalities resurrected and meet all the other operational requirements would be the work of weeks, not hours.

In the inevitable inquest into this dire end-of-year collapse, which has torn up the travel plans of more than 30,000 travellers, your question may be raised. Eurostar, which says the Kent stations cannot possibly reopen in light of post-Covid finances and post-Brexit complications, will doubtless explain robustly why it would be a waste of resources to have a station on standby.

Since the tunnel incident was the first such calamity in 15 years of operation, I tend to agree – but I hope Eurostar will do more to have access to chartered coaches that could get at least some of the unfortunate passengers slowly to their destinations through the lovely Kent countryside.

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