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.

[MurmuratingStarling]

Isn't it obvious this is a zombie thread from the fact it's go almost 900 bloody responses? People have hardly been posting on here since the site regenerated!

[GinniMcGinface]

Completely aware the thread was months old, but I was invested in it but got sidetracked- I’m pretty inconsistent with text messaging too- sometimes a reply in 6 minutes, sometimes 6 hours, days, weeks, or in this case, 6 months. I didn’t appreciate that others would then see this thread and not actually read it.

[Latenightreader]

@Sexnotgender

@ppp4321

Delighted to hear you did the near impossible.

On a tangential subject, I also only found out looking for something else that we needed to take the full (not abbreviated) and original (not copies) birth certificates if you take kids to South Africa. I can imagine that may catch a few people out as BA didn't inform us specifically of that requirement. Just in case it helps anyone...

South Africa is wild. Particularly if you’re travelling with a child under 18 and only one parent! Had to get a signed affidavit off my dick head ex husband to say we could travel.

My cousin lives in a neighbouring country and regularly transits through SA. On one occasion she was questioned for a long time over whether her baby daughter (whose father is part Chinese) was actually hers. She said it was terrifying because she really thought they were going to take her away.