Have you seen the movie The Terminal starring Tom Hanks, well if you haven’t let me explain it to you a little bit. In the movie Tom Hanks character is traveling on a plane and during his flight his native country ceases to exist as a country. Because of this when he lands his passport is no longer a valid passport and the country won’t let him pass through immigration. Also he is unable to return to his home country because it is no longer a country. So he ends up living in the terminal of the airport, unable to go into the country he has landed in and also unable to travel anywhere else.
Well this happened to me on this last travel day. I was traveling between Beijing, China and Johannesburg, South Africa and had a layover in Hong Kong. I boarded the plane in Beijing and landed in Hong Kong. After the couple hour layover in Hong Kong I got in line to board the plane to South Africa. While waiting in line the airlines had their personnel going through and checking everyone’s tickets and passports. I pulled out my ticket and then went to pull out my passport only to find that it wasn’t in the pocket that I usually keep it in. I then proceeded to check all of my other pockets and backpack only to find that it is not in any of those as well.
When I realized that I didn’t have my passport I told the airline personnel, who told me to head to the counter in front of the gate. On my way up to the counter I passed Joshua, my squad leader, whom I told I was missing my passport. After telling him the both of us went to the man behind the counter and told him about the situation. He asked me to check all of my belongings again to see if I could find my passport as he called airport security to see if a missing passport had been turned in. After checking with security and finding out that one had not been turned in, he cancelled mine and Joshua’s ticket and had the airline remove our baggage from the plane. He then said that he would be turning me over to the airline personnel of the airlines that I flew from Beijing to Hong Kong.
Once I was handed over to the other airline’s staff I was taken to the immigration check point to see if they would allow me to leave the airport. When we arrived they said that they didn’t have the authority to release me but they would call the Hong Kong police to see if they could have an officer come and release me. When the officer arrived he had me fill out a theft report and then said that since I didn’t have a passport I would not be able to leave the terminal. After finding this out the airline staff took me and Joshua to a waiting area in the terminal that we were to spend the night at. They gave us their one remaining blanket and a handful of water bottles. We spent the next several hours trying to get into contact with the US consulate in Hong Kong as well as talking with staff at AIM trying to figure out what to do.
We spent the night there, getting very little rest due to the fact that we were in a mad scramble trying to figure out how I was going to get to South Africa and also because the airport was having construction being done and there was a jack hammer being used the entire night. After a night of next to no sleep, we awoke to get down to business again. Shortly after we had gotten up another member of Dragon Air’s staff came up to us and introduced himself as Wayne. The first thing that he did was to call the US Consulate and began to talk to them. After talking with them for a while he hand the phone to me because the consulate needed to ask me some questions. After answering the questions I hand the phone back to Wayne who proceeded to talk to the lady on the other end of the line. A couple of minutes later e hung up and said that the US Consulate would be sending some over with papers that would ask the HK Immigration Office if they would allow me to enter the city so that I could go and get an emergency passport.
