Son's passport expiring - family hols in ruins

[blueshoes]

Dh and I were looking forward to our family holiday in Crete, Greece for the October half term. We watched the covid-19/PCR situation closely not realising that my 15 year old son's passport has less than 3 months. Just found out today. This is our first foreign holiday since covid struck.

The government website says that for entry to Greece, your passport must be valid for at least 3 months after the day you plan to leave Greece, or any other Schengen country.

We leave on 30 October and my son's passport expires just short of 3 months on 22 January 2022. It is too late to renew his passport as we are leaving in less than a week.

Ds cannot come with us, can he? We f_ked up.

Anybody recently travelled to Greece with Ryanair with less than 3 months left on their passport? Is it a bad idea to turn up and chance it or bite the bullet now and plan on the basis ds cannot go.

@blueshoes good luck today, do come back and tell us how you get on.

@blueshoes hope you can get something sorted today xx

Good on you for finding a way to lake it happen. Can’t believe the amount of judging and arsey comments you’ve had in some of the posts!! Ridiculous!

Your son is 15 and not a little kid! As parents we know what our kids are like and whether he’d be able to survive without mummy and daddy for a week! We have phones, internet, video calling!

Threats of reporting OP to social services… Really?! FFS Grow up mumsnetters!!

This is entirely a brexit problem as it would not have happened if we were still in the EU.

Unfortunately a load of morons voted to end our freedom of movement, but it is being given back to all the other EU countries, piece by piece, as the UK is grinding to a halt without it.

Look at any non UK paper, Bloomberg is in English, to see what a joke and warning the UK now is.

You’ve made a mistake, it happens! I wouldn’t kick yourself about the passport, it feels worse as it’s your child’s passport but it could’ve been anybody’s!

However, personally I wouldn’t leave my 15 year old DS to his own devices for a week staying with different parents, especially as you don’t know them. The ‘chain’ of sleepovers might break due to covid/change of plans etc. If he didn’t turn up to the designated parents house, would you know? Would they tell you? How would you find him from Greece? It’s really not as easy as just coming back, I suspect flights will be chocca.

The only option in my eyes would be your son stays with one friend/family who is willing to take parental responsibility for your child for a week. A single unit willing to ensure he is having 3 meals a day, getting to school and back safely, not something that can be done by 8 separate households.

Or

You move your holiday in line with your sons passports. Ring Ryanair and see if they’ll change your flights (obviously admin fees etc) move your booking on booking.com. Your son will miss 1 week of school, you’ll likely get £120 fine. If necessary I’d put it on my credit card and chalk it up to life experience. 1 week of schooling (which he could catch up on) is far better than a 15 year old essentially alone for a week.

I wouldn’t give yourself a hard time and I understand your desperately trying to find a solution that suits everybody. Saying that, I would really discourage you from leaving your child without an adult whom accepts responsibility for him for the week.

genuine question op, youre deflecting a lot of peoples answers with humour and sarcasm. Do you feel embarassed at all? The idea of messaging potentially 5 other parents I barely know saying "Hi, is it ok if X stays the night? The rest of the family will be in Greece but I messed up his passport so we are leaving him behind, its what he wants, honest" would make me die inside and feel ashamed of my parenting. So, genuine question, how does that make you feel?

obviously the issue cannot be helped now and was 100% an accident. but your actions now CAN be helped. the decisions youre making is where my issue lies. Firstly to go without him. and secondly to then allow him to roam around friends houses and leave strangers in charge of him while you are out of the country, rather than family. And I understand "its what he wants" but hes 15 and you dont always get what you want when safety is an issue.

Would have been fewer worries about this if we didn't Brexit. Although governments can advise about minimum validity on passports, EU nations/airlines could not refuse EU citizens entry based on this. Fringe cases where airlines such as Ryanair wrongly refuse boarding to flights, but ultimately as an EU citizen, even the day before your passport expires, you have the right to go absolutely anywhere within Europe and you would win a court case 100%. Now we are not protected by such rights.

Another Brexit perk.

@SallyWebsterr I think this is a fair question, you are very kind to word it so politely. Smells of CFery to me - if I was one of the other parents I would think so at least - bundling your teen onto his friends and their parents to keep him safe and letting him wander between places (some will therefore feel obliged to liaise with a 3rd set of parents to drop OPs DS off etc - madness).

Saw a similar story on Reddit this morning. I'm surprised at adults who do not know this travel rule. I guess it's one of those things parents aren't passing down to their kids and they're growing up unaware of it.

Maybe travel companies need to put it in bigger, redder letters?

Pretty astonished that "he can't come with us" is your first thought. As a parent, as a family, as someone who's supposed to love him and want to be with him, the thought is "we cannot go." Odd.

Aside from having to leave your son behind which I can't imagine as mine is 10 (maybe I'll feel differently at 15 🤷‍♀️), by hoisting him onto others you are potentially buggering up 5 other families half term plans?

@MiniCooperLover presumably the other families don't have plans. I'd be delighted as the DP of an only if we got a random pal for a couple of days.

Mine would be too but i wouldn't necessarily trust the word of a 15 year old that it's ok, I'd have to do a lot of due diligence to check

When you entered the passport details to book your flights didn't it occur to you that it was about to run out and it might be worth checking if it would be valid?

@Hathertonhariden

When you entered the passport details to book your flights didn't it occur to you that it was about to run out and it might be worth checking if it would be valid?

You don't need passport details to book flights

@MiniCooperLover

Aside from having to leave your son behind which I can't imagine as mine is 10 (maybe I'll feel differently at 15 🤷‍♀️), by hoisting him onto others you are potentially buggering up 5 other families half term plans?

People can say no if it doesn't suit them can't they?

@blueshoes hopefully your trip to the passport office today was successful.

@wewereliars
This is entirely a brexit problem as it would not have happened if we were still in the EU.
The passport needed renewing. That's not down to Brexit. That's down to disorganisation. Before we'd Brexited, people were in exactly the same position when their passports were due to expire.

[quote madisonbridges]@wewereliars
This is entirely a brexit problem as it would not have happened if we were still in the EU.
The passport needed renewing. That's not down to Brexit. That's down to disorganisation. Before we'd Brexited, people were in exactly the same position when their passports were due to expire.[/quote]
However, the OP would still have been able to go on their holiday with their DS, because the rules on exactly when the passport was deemed to be expired has changed,

Because of Brexshit!

Really, do keep up...

The shock on the forum is not about what her son wants, but about what she wants…which is a nice child-free holiday which she’s now getting!

Surely if that's what she wanted that is what she would have planned from the start? Why waste a load of money paying for her child to come on holiday if she didn't want him there?

A quick update.

I managed to get a 1 week Fast Track appointment at the Passport Office for midday tomorrow. Hurrah. Still pretty tight timeline because the passport will need to arrive in 2 working days, not a week but at least there is an iota of hope ds can renew his passport in time to come with us.

Just to be clear, the same day Online Premium Service is only for adults, not children. 1 week Fast Track is the fastest service available for renewal of ds' passport.

In case any mntter finds themselves in this situation (I hope not!), those appointments become available on the passport office site and disappear again in a flash. I missed out on one appointment because I was too slow to get my wallet to pay the £122 fee.

After that, I was refreshing the page every 5 mins with my card right next to me. I could hear the blood pounding in my head as I entered the credit card numbers in the hope the appointment had not gone by the time I hit submit.

I will still need to put plan B in place with ds friends' parents. Ds seems to prefer plan B but is probably too polite to say ...

No, I don't need childfree. DD 18 is coming with us anyway.

Dd 18 and Ds 15 are no trouble at all and a joy to holiday with at this age. Funny with good conversation. And then on their phones and laptops the rest of the time.

I'd probably run out of convo with Dh in about 2 days.

Before we'd Brexited, people were in exactly the same position when their passports were due to expire.

No, because her son's passport doesn't expire until January next year, as was said in the opening post. Now with Brexit for EU countries you can no longer rely on the date of expiry that your passport says.

*but she's NOT trying though-

They have appointments for same day passports on the website , I just looked .
*

@Lightswitch123

You know you got that all wrong, right?

OP there are going to be some posters who will be gutted if you get the passport in time

what with you wanting a child free holiday and not being bothered or arsed or negligent or uncaring or not knowing your own son etc

Good Luck OP🤞🤞🤞

Sounds promising OP! Good luck, let us know.