In late 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order regarding Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government (Note: link no longer works. It did when we wrote about it in 2021). The plan was to (finally) bring important government agencies into the digital era while simultaneously reducing the red tape Americans encounter when using multiple federal government services.
One of those services was passport renewals, and after 3+ years of planning, development and pilot programs, the program went live permanently in September 2024.
The program works beautifully, and instead of filling out your paper application, getting a mini headshot, writing a check to the U.S. government, sending everything in by mail, including your expiring/expired passport, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best…
…most adults with U.S. passports can now complete the entire process online.
Plus – BONUS!!! Besides the simple convenience of doing it all electronically, if you renew that way and there are no issues with your renewal, you typically get your passport back in less than 2 weeks. SCORE!
BUT…be aware of this major potential problem
So online passport renewal is convenient AND fast – all great, right?
Well, yes. Except for one potential problem. User error.
I don’t mean user error like you sent the government a passport photo that doesn’t work with their requirements, or forgot to put your middle name into your application. I mean user error that could potentially ruin an entire vacation.
A user who goes by the name ConfidentDisk1987 described in the United Airlines subreddit on Reddit what recently happened to their spouse on a trip from the U.S. to the U.K. with her brand-spanking-new passport.
A few days ago, ConfidentDisk1987 (a.k.a. OP) and their wife flew on United Airlines from Denver to London. When they got to Heathrow, OP went through the e-gates without any problems. But OP’s wife was stopped at the gate and told to go to one of the border control booths.
The officer there examined her passport but looked puzzled. They asked her a few questions, and they were the kind you typically don’t get asked at Immigration if everything is OK, such as whether her passport had ever been lost or stolen (she said it hadn’t).
After more questions and delays, the cause of the problem finally dawned on OP’s wife: although she had recently renewed her passport, she had grabbed her old one by mistake. THAT passport only had 10 days left before it expired (Note: the UK is not a country that requires you to have 6 months left on your passport to travel there). But if they were staying for longer than the UK’s requirements – OP didn’t say either way – that could have easily been the reason for concern.
Said OP:
The officers conferred and ultimately admitted her after impounding the passport. They gave her a form that she could present to any police officer if stopped, certifying that she had been admitted without proper documentation, and instructed her to obtain an emergency passport from the U.S. consulate …. The officers were very kind and noted that this situation happens more often than people might think.
How could this even happen?
Think about it – there are so many times you get your passport and other paperwork checked before you get on a plane to an international destination – how could something like that even happen, right?
OP had obviously thought it all through:
Old & new passports look the same
Probably most importantly, when you used to send your passport in for the renewal process, they would poke holes through the cover of the “old” passport, to make it no longer valid.
My current passport and my 3 passports before it. Bonus points if you know why my first passport was green. 😉
They can’t do that anymore because you don’t send the “old” passport to them with this new process. So if you have 2 identical-looking passports and you’re in a rush, it’s easy enough to grab the wrong one.
That’s human error #1 and, no offense to OP, your own fault. Keep ’em separate, y’all!
United employee wasn’t thorough enough
When OP and their wife dropped their bags off before the flight, the agent asked for ID. They obviously verified the names and faces…but not the expiration dates.
That’s human error #2, but OP said that that didn’t appear to be part of the agent’s responsibility, since their verified passport information was already in their system. Which brings us to:
Everything’s electronic
OP said that their wife had uploaded the information from her (new, valid) passport to United’s Travel Ready Center. As far as United’s internal systems were concerned, the wife had a valid passport.
When they got to DEN, they used touchless ID at the TSA checkpoint – no passport or other physical identification was required (although even if she had used her physical passport as her ID, a TSA agent wouldn’t have been paying attention to its expiration date – TSA currently accepts expired ID up to two years after expiration).
When they got to the gate, biometric identification was used – and THAT would have matched the information the wife had entered online (again OP said, “the agents did ask to see passports, but only examined them cursorily and did not verify expiration dates.”)
And that’s how it happened
So that’s how the wife was able to board a flight to London without actually having a valid passport. Sure, there were checks in place to ensure she had a valid passport ON FILE. But no one ever checked whether she was carrying a valid passport IN HAND. Which she inadvertently wasn’t.
OP’s story had a happy ending – someone at home was able to FedEx the wife’s valid passport to her overnight. But not everyone will be so lucky.
Of course, airlines and airports probably should take a better look at the passports that people are holding. But to be honest, this was mainly the wife’s fault – her valid and invalid passports looked the same at first glance, and she grabbed the wrong one.
It’s an easy mistake, but also easily remedied, so it doesn’t happen in the first place.
Don’t let that happen to you.
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