Visa checking within Schengen
 

The main question is: do they check your visa when you travel (by plane) within the Schengen zone? And the background info of my situation is below:

I'm a non-EU citizen and currently I live in Spain on student visa. Recently I lost my passport which has my Spanish visa in it. I've applied for a new passport, but I cannot get a new Spanish visa unless I go back to NYC and have the consulate there stamp the visa on my new passport. However, the consulate said they would send me this paper that verifies that I'm living legally in Spain. The problem is I have plans to travel to Belgium, Italy and Greece soon and I'm worried that without a visa, I might not be able to either enter those countries or come back to Spain. I know there's no passport control when you get off the plane, but I remember last time I flew from Lisbon to Paris, the check-in guy looked for my visa in the passport. So I don't know if the rules require visa checking before boarding the plan and if I will get in trouble if I only have the my passport and the paper from the consulate and not an official visa.

PS: just to make it clear, I am not a citizen of a country that can enter the Schengen zone without a visa, even for less than 90 days.

They might, they might not. It really depends. If they do check it, it would be at the check-in desks at the airport. If you're worried about this, check in online.

Travel within Schengen is generally free of passport controls. The point is the "generally" which implies that each country has the right to perform passport controls for specific reasons, such as a big sports event (e.g. Olympic games), or e.g. a meeting of the G20. But you can easily avoid these events.

The other - and for you more risky - situation is that you can run any time into a police check, e.g. on the street when they look for drunken drivers or drivers without a valid driving license. Here, your missing passport stamp might be an issue. I assume that you know Murphy's Law: You will have exactly one random check in your whole life - and that one will happen exactly at that time when your passport has not yet the visa "moved" :D.

Thanks guys!

Scrooge McDuck: yeah I know, in fact, I must be the perfect example of that law haha. About random police check, I have never experienced that, and I look super foreign in most of the places I've traveled to. Would you say it happens more to people who might look like "trouble makers"?

Exactly that´s what you should expect. (not fair but it´s the reality ...)

But on the other hand don´t forget that the Schengen countries use a common "register/data base" where authorities can check whether or not someone has a valid visa !
So, despite your new passport has no visa sticker in it you only need to make sure that the new passport number is in the system (together with a notice regarding loss of previous passport)

At check-in the agent will only verify that the person checking in is the person in the reservation. No requirements regarding visa !

So, you will not be in serious trouble as long you have a valid visa. You may just experience some inconvenience due to no sticker in your passport. The document issued by the consulate might help but is not a guarantee !

... and finally:
I don´t understand why you should not be able to get the visa sticker in your new passport and stamped in Spain. Since you have your new passport in hands already your local immigration office in Spain should be able to just put the visa label in your new passport - no need to go back to NYC for that ...
The local immigration office has access to the Schengen immigration database. And since you reported the loss of your previous passport to the immigration (I suppose you did that ...) there should be no fuzz about issuing a new visa sticker in Spain.
The document from the NYC consulate may be helpful for that - but not for travel in the Schengenzone as non-spanish immigration officers are unlikely to accept a notice from the spanish consulate in New York - other than a proper visa!

As Palal already mentioned if you get checked then at check-in it will be. But they are not required to check visa status if flying intra Schengen. They just ensure the correct person flies.

I entered Schengen without having my passport checked at all (I tried but nobody was interested), and nobody said anything when I later checked in for an Schengen flight.

Entering the Schengen zone from outside is a totally different subject.
But entering the Schengen area e.g. from the UK it is possible that nobody looks at you. Mainly due to the fact that upon check-in in the UK your documents will be checked anyway.

For the intra Schengen flight there´s - as already mentionned - no requirement to check ID besides verification of the passenger matching the name in the reservation.

Thank you MHG! Looks like I've been stressed out more than I should be about this issue :P.

This is exactly what I thought at first, because the immigration office should have my info in their database right? But when I called the consulate, they told me that the only way I could get a new visa sticker is to go back to NYC and have them stamp it in my new passport.
Anyway one more question: do airline staff (or anyone else at the airport where you depart, you know, those people who check your passport when you're in line for security scanning and boarding) have the right to refuse to let you board because of something related to visa?

I would expect in some countries they have the right to refuse boarding in such cases but this may vary between countries - no matter whether a country is a Schengen member or not.

I would not risk it. Most airlines want to see a visa or residence card. This is not only Ryanair but also Brussels Airlines. So maybe no immigration officers but the airlines can cause you trouble. If I were you, I postpone the trip. This applies for air travel. Bus travel is worse: on a bus trip in Germany we were stopped two times for passport checks. This was with a flying brigade, so not at the border itself. They also did this in France (although there it was more for drugs).

With no proof that you are in Spain legally you probably shouldn't risk it.

If you have a document which shows you are there legally (like the letter that you mentioned in the first post) then I can't see a problem.

Just curious, but is there any reason that you can't simply go to the consulate in New York and get a new visa there? That would solve all the issues it seems.

I suspect it´s the $$$$$ for the ticket from Spain to New York and back that makes him reluctant to "just go there" ...

Expense? Inconvenience? They would seem to me to be the most likely reasons, and I hardly think it's odd that the OP would not want to do this.

On re-reading this thread, I'm not surprised that the OP can't get a visa sticker locally. If you're inside a country already there would be no need to grant permission to enter, at least, I thought this was generally the case in EU countries.

Unless the OP is on a short course, he should have a Spanish residency permit (Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero) which may be the way forward here.