Travel document checklist: what to carry and where to keep it

Travelling with other people means being responsible for documents that are not yours, usually including at least one person who cannot be responsible for their own.

Two categories matter. What has to be checked well in advance, because it cannot be fixed at an airport, and what has to be findable on the day.

Check these months ahead

Every one of these has ended trips at check-in desks.

5 things to do

Passport expiry for every traveller. Many countries require six months validity beyond your return date, so an in-date passport can still be refused.
Blank pages, which some countries require and which nobody thinks about.
Visa or travel authorisation requirements, including electronic ones that are quick but not instant.
Whether a child travelling with one parent, or with neither, needs documented consent. Rules vary and are enforced unevenly, which is worse than being enforced consistently.
Name mismatches between passport and booking, which cause more problems than anything else on this list.

Ticks are for this visit only. Nothing here is saved anywhere.

Passport validity catches people every year

The rule that surprises people is that many destinations require your passport to remain valid for six months after you arrive or leave. A passport expiring in four months is in date and still refused.

Check every traveller, not just the adults. Children's passports are usually valid for fewer years and expire at unhelpful moments precisely because nobody is watching them.

What to have findable on the day

5 things to do

Passports, obviously, and it is worth agreeing who is physically carrying which.
Booking references for flights, stays and transfers, readable without hunting through email.
Travel insurance policy number and the emergency assistance phone number, which is the detail people have never once memorised.
Any medication documentation, especially for anything that would raise questions at a border.
One phone number per booking that a human will actually answer.

Ticks are for this visit only. Nothing here is saved anywhere.

A photo of a passport is not a backup

It is useful for filling in forms and for proving to yourself what the number was. It is not a travel document, and it will not get anybody onto a plane.

The genuinely useful record is knowing what exists and where it is right now. Whose passport is in which bag. Whether the insurance is under one person's name. Which parent is carrying which child's documents. That is the information that resolves a problem at a desk, and it is the part nobody writes down.

Keep something on paper

A phone at four percent in a taxi is a normal situation, not a rare one. Passport numbers, the insurance line and the key references on one printed page cost nothing and work when nothing else does.