Page 17 | Child’s passport only has 2 months on it. Flying to Spain on Saturday!

olympicsrock · 2022-02-15T10:39:01+00:00

Help!!! Just discovered that my 10 year old son’s passport only has 2 months left on it. We have flights booked to go to Spain on Saturday. . Has anyone travelled to Spain on this situation recently? What happened?? Were you refused permission to board the plane? I have phoned the passport office . There is absolutely no way to get a passport for him in the next 10 days as need to do face to face for child renewal , no appointments til next week abs then a week to deliver by post.

Lesperance · 15/02/2022 16:36

@Worried1305

Not relevant to the OP, but back in 2010 my entire family lost our passports (ALL of them - they were all in the same bag) while on holiday in France. Cue HUGE panic.

What happened? We travelled home without them - no dramas, just a short meeting at the ferry terminal to explain what had happened, and a few forms to fill in (plus showing driving licenses / other ID we happened to have with us). It was a very expensive mistake (had to renew them all!) but otherwise it was fine.

I dread to think what it would be like if it happened now, post-Brexit…

It'd be similar. There's a massive difference between trying to exit the foreign country you are staying in to return to your home country and trying to get into a foreign country without the correct paperwork.

ENoeuf · 15/02/2022 16:30

You can apply for an emergency travel document if you lose a passport abroad. I imagine similar to pre Brexit.

www.gov.uk/emergency-travel-document/how-to-apply

VikingsandDragons · 15/02/2022 16:22

Keep refreshing the appointments every few minutes, they come up really often. We had a similar situation last year, and initially we were waiting 3 weeks for an appointment, but 2 hours of hitting refresh we had one the next day, even if it was 3 hours away (and then the always reliable never had an issue before car broke down half way and we missed it anyway!)

JoanOgden · 15/02/2022 16:20

Happened to friends of mins recently - they hadn't checked their son's passport until q week before they were due to go on holiday. They spent 48 hours refreshing the passport application website, got a face to face appointment for the next day, then the passport arrived 3 days later, just in time.

Branleuse · 15/02/2022 16:18

id see if you can move the flights a couple of weeks or to the april holiday

HerbertChops · 15/02/2022 16:14

My dh was in this situation, only realised the day before as BA wouldn’t allow him to check in online. They’d let him buy the ticket a few weeks before with the same passport, so annoying. We had to cancel and rebook for a few weeks later. Your ds won’t be able to travel. Passport office stopped doing emergency face to face appointments at the beginning of the pandemic.

TyrannosaurusRegina · 15/02/2022 16:12

@harriethoyle

What you don't do *@TyrannosaurusRegina* is snap at people not to post again on your thread and tell them you can read, when they appear genuinely to be trying to help. However stressed op is by her mistake I suspect that's the point she lost a lot of sympathy and was just unnecessarily rude.

Trying to help? They were trying to hinder more than anything else, just to get their tuppenceworth in. How about you start a thread, where you're trying to get a simple question answered and people continously derail it with completely pointless input? I think you'd end up snapping.

AnEpisodeOfEastenders · 15/02/2022 16:12

@Worried1305

Not relevant to the OP, but back in 2010 my entire family lost our passports (ALL of them - they were all in the same bag) while on holiday in France. Cue HUGE panic.

What happened? We travelled home without them - no dramas, just a short meeting at the ferry terminal to explain what had happened, and a few forms to fill in (plus showing driving licenses / other ID we happened to have with us). It was a very expensive mistake (had to renew them all!) but otherwise it was fine.

I dread to think what it would be like if it happened now, post-Brexit…

You'd probably need to do something similar and keep the UK embassy of the host country involved in discussions so they can provide assistance. People lost passports pre-Brexit and will continue to post-Brexit. And passports expired pre-Brexit in the same way they do post-Brexit. The point people are making is Brexit had nothing to do with the expiry date on the passport.

daimbarsatemydogsbone · 15/02/2022 16:04

@Toanewstart23

I love it when a poster wades in with….

Here’s the definitive facts on the issue

And then they get it wrong

@RobotValkyrie

Agreed, especially when it starts with a sneering A few actual facts for the factually challenged: and is then a pile of wank.

Bostromani · 15/02/2022 16:04

Not exactly the same situation, but we are traveling in May and have found that both mine and my child's passport have expired.

Hopefully we can get them renewed fairly quickly.

Always a good thing to check passport issues well in advance.

Partyintheusa2012 · 15/02/2022 16:00

Surely in 2022 the computer system will flag the issue, even if the member of staff doesn't actually notice.

Assume the passport office will take the maximum time they say.

I would either move the holiday or keep refreshing and hope for an appointment to come up asap x

MrsArchchancellorRidcully · 15/02/2022 15:59

Similar happened to us and DH spent almost the whole day in Liverpool and got an emergency new passport for DS. Cost us a bloody fortune and luckily DH is self employed so it's worth looking into.

MayMorris · 15/02/2022 15:58

There’s no way some of you go and DS gets left behind. That’s bloody awful to even consider it.
Cancel. It’s an expensive and upsetting mistake for all of you, don’t even let him know it was his passport if possible, that was cause.
Just say something has come up and we need to cancel.

VanGoghsDog · 15/02/2022 15:55

@TheChronicalTales

Hi OP. This happened to me and DP and he was allowed to board- he had two months left on his passport. We decided to risk it and didn’t mention it and there was only a quick glance at his passport, no problem! I know what the legal requirements are but they literally glanced for around half a second.

However, this was pre covid. Not sure how it will be with presumably much tighter restrictions and checking as they’ll be checking covid vaccination status too? This was also pre brexit to a European country.

This was also pre brexit to a European country.

🤦🏻‍♀️

SockFluffInTheBath · 15/02/2022 15:54

Oops. Good luck OP

Whammyyammy · 15/02/2022 15:43

@Toanewstart23

And let me guess

“Oh he will have a whale of a time with his best friend, would MUCH prefer to go there rather than a big family foreign holiday.”

🤣🤣🤣

tkwal · 15/02/2022 15:41

Travel agent and company website both pointed this out when we booked a break for November last year. You would also have had to find out about covid passport and vaccination policy for minors. If you booked the trip yourself you really have no excuse. If someone else booked it , they should have let you know

Worried1305 · 15/02/2022 15:40

Not relevant to the OP, but back in 2010 my entire family lost our passports (ALL of them - they were all in the same bag) while on holiday in France. Cue HUGE panic.

What happened? We travelled home without them - no dramas, just a short meeting at the ferry terminal to explain what had happened, and a few forms to fill in (plus showing driving licenses / other ID we happened to have with us). It was a very expensive mistake (had to renew them all!) but otherwise it was fine.

I dread to think what it would be like if it happened now, post-Brexit…

Toanewstart23 · 15/02/2022 15:37

I love it when a poster wades in with….

Here’s the definitive facts on the issue

And then they get it wrong

@RobotValkyrie

kitcat15 · 15/02/2022 15:37

None of you go....rearrange for easter

TheChronicalTales · 15/02/2022 15:36

Hi OP. This happened to me and DP and he was allowed to board- he had two months left on his passport. We decided to risk it and didn’t mention it and there was only a quick glance at his passport, no problem! I know what the legal requirements are but they literally glanced for around half a second.

However, this was pre covid. Not sure how it will be with presumably much tighter restrictions and checking as they’ll be checking covid vaccination status too? This was also pre brexit to a European country.

daimbarsatemydogsbone · 15/02/2022 15:28

@HelloFrostyMorning

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

It's not even to do with "reamainers/leavers" - it's just factually incorrect that the OPs failure to check the dates had anything at all to do with Brexit.

daimbarsatemydogsbone · 15/02/2022 15:26

@RobotValkyrie

The amount of misinformation and denial on this thread is off the charts...

A few actual facts for the factually challenged:

you can't do a same day emergency passport for kids, fastest service is advertised as 7 days
you could totally travel to the EU on a soon-to-be-expired passport before Brexit, thanks to the freedom of movement afforded to all EU citizens. In fact travelling on an expired document, or no passport at all, was in theory possible as well, as long as your proof of EU citizenship was credible enough. E.g. back in the early/mid? 2000s, you could simply show your UK driving license to fly with Ryanair from UK to France.
Brexit means some valid (not yet expired, would be 100% valid to enter the UK) passports are no longer valid to travel to the EU. This rule is new to many people because, even though Brexit was 2 years ago, many people haven't been travelling at all during the pandemic (which also started about 2 years ago, in case you missed it, or already forgot...). And the exact rules are unclear, even to airlines (lots of confusion around the 3 months VS 6 months rule)

E.g. back in the early/mid? 2000s, you could simply show your UK driving license to fly with Ryanair from UK to France. No you couldn't.

Topseyt · 15/02/2022 15:25

@WutheringHeights66

Goes off to check validity in all our passports

I did that too! Although I had already done it at the time of booking our holiday too. They are fine. I just get paranoid.

DD3's (2nd year uni student) will have to be renewed when she comes back from a trip to Florence in March because she will be spending the next academic year abroad and it will expire before that is up. So when she returns from Florence I will be insisting that she returns her passport to me so that I can sort it.

Snowpatrolling · 15/02/2022 15:24

@dementedpixie

Before brexit the passport only needed to be valid for length of stay within Europe rather than have 3 extra months remaining so Brexit has changed things

I worked in travel 15 years ago, the 3 month rule was in then, not just a brexit thing. I had customers turned away at the gate, and if they did manage to get through sent back home from where ever they flew to.