Intra-Schengen flights without passports: EU citizen and non-citizen spouse with 5-year residency
I have found myself in a very frustrating situation, I'm sure a variant of which will have happened to many an experienced traveller. My wife and I live in Germany and planned to visit Spain this weekend, but our passports are held up in an unrelated administrative process with little hope of getting them back before we fly.
I am an EU citizen from the UK. She is a Colombian citizen, with a 5-year EU family member residence permit here in Germany on account of being my spouse. The German residence permit is also held up in the unrelated administrative process.
The flights are both direct Berlin-Madrid, with Iberia on the way and Ryanair return. On previous intra-Schengen flights we have not had passports checked by border guards, although on some occasions they were verified by the airline at the gate.
I am aware that it is explicitly allowed for EU citizens to travel intra-Schengen without a passport. I am not sure if this is the case, officially, for non-EU family members with residence permits.
What do the rules say, and what will the consequences be if we, for example, get to Spain without our passports being checked, and are then refused by the airline on the way back, on account of not having them? Is this something I can clear with the airlines involved in advance?
Best Answer
Having explored all the possibilities on offer in this frustrating situation, let me provide my ultimate conclusion for a bit of perspective & advice from someone who's been there: You are not going. Accept the situation and move on.
You've lost some money for sure. But there's nothing you can do about that. What you can do now is save at least something by rebooking/exchanging as many things as possible, before it's too late to do so.
Don't dither on this thinking you'll discover more options somehow - you are not going - and the later you leave it the less you'll be able to recoup.
The bottom line is this: If you do manage to fly both ways over any EU international border without a passport (or an EU state ID card for those that have them), and get by fine without one in the foreign country, you can safely assume you've done so out of pure luck on a long list of dimensions.
Don't ever count on being lucky when you really need to be, because of course you will not be and will instead find yourself in a quite awful and stressful situation. Is the money you've lost actually worth putting yourself through that? Probably not.
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