Check your passport expiry date!

For many of us 2022 may be the first time since 2019 that we've had the opportunity to travel internationally. After such a long break without getting the passport out, we may have lost sight of the expiry dates of our travel documents.

My partner tried to book a package holiday this week and we discovered her passport expired Nov' 2021. Similarly, a friend of mine was traveling last weekend and encountered a distraught mother who realised her passport had expired at the airport check-in with her family.

In the UK, it can take 4-10 weeks to renew a passport, longer at peak periods. I anticipate a surge of applications in Spring and Summer and lengthy delays in turnaround time.

Check your passport today, renew if necessary, and avoid all that stress.

Not to mention that many countries require a passport with 6 months validity on the date of entry as a condition of entry.

I was once prevented from boarding a flight because my Passport did not have a fully Blank Page!! I had to get a same day passport printed in Seattle. Amazingly I was able to rebook my flights to Indonesia and made it in time to get on the liveaboard. Punchline: When we got to customs in Indo my new passport was fine. And where do you think they put the stamp on my wife's half-full passport? On a not-blank page!!!

2 hours ago, davehicks said:

I was once prevented from boarding a flight because my Passport did not have a fully Blank Page!! I had to get a same day passport printed in Seattle. Amazingly I was able to rebook my flights to Indonesia and made it in time to get on the liveaboard. Punchline: When we got to customs in Indo my new passport was fine. And where do you think they put the stamp on my wife's half-full passport? On a not-blank page!!!

and they would also probably have happily denied entry if the didn't have the option on a blank page,, Immigration rules are developed by bureaucracies with no interest in logic.  

Always do your own research into entry requirements, airlines will stick to them to the letter as they don't want the grief involved with delivering someone who hasn't met those requirements.