Having the freedom to travel is one of the great pleasures in life. In this age of digitization, there are several ways to make the travel paperwork even easier.
Online Passport Renewals
After, shall we say, quite a while (*cough* YEARS *cough*), the State Department, under the Biden administration, finally made online passport renewals a regular, permanent thing. It’s been out of the pilot phase for over a year, but the feedback has been overwhelming.
Global Entry
Those with Global Entry know how much time it can save you when entering the United States. Nowadays, the program isn’t just for U.S. citizens; people from over 20 other countries can potentially be approved for Global Entry, which can expedite their time in queues when entering the U.S., as well.
The big catch
If you already had Global Entry and renewed your passport online, be aware that as great as “electronic everything” is, not every piece of the puzzle fits into place yet.
Global Entry members know their GE membership is tied to their passport number. Even before the State Department offered online passport renewals, the rule of thumb was that when you got a new passport (and a new number), it didn’t update automatically in Global Entry—you had to change it yourself. That took some extra steps, including logging into your Trusted Traveler Program (TTP) account and updating the information in your profile. Not a big deal.
One would think that with everything being electronic, the “changing of the passport number” would happen automatically, right?
A reader recently wrote to tell us this important fact: it doesn’t.
Here’s what they said:
Guess what? If you renewed your passport online and your old passport still had validity, you might get a red flag on your account when going through customs.
I was leaving MIA through the GE line and the Customs person stopped me. She asked if I had any issues with my passport. I said no, I hadn’t. She then asked if I had another U.S. passport and I said no but that I had recently renewed online. She then said the issue would be because of that since my old passport doesn’t expire until August 2026. She said to update my GE profile and it should remove the flag.
So there ya go. Even if you renew your passport online, you still have to manually update your Global Entry. The two systems, although both electronic, apparently still don’t sync with each other.
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