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

[olympicsrock]

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.

Thanks, HaveringWavering, that makes sense.

You need to get emergency passport appointment

Happened to a friend she drove 4 hours to get the passport sorted on the same day

France asks for 3 months validity which is why there was no issue

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• Brexit means some valid (not yet expired, would be 100% valid to enter the UK) passports are no longer valid to travel to the EU.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)

@Remmy123

You need to get emergency passport appointment

Happened to a friend she drove 4 hours to get the passport sorted on the same day

There isn't a same day service for children

@olympicsrock

Thanks Jiving…. Just seeing that the appointments available do change so I will keep checking. Prob the best I can hope for.

Trying to come up with a plan B, C and D.
B - DH and DS2 go and DS1 And I try to join them for the last few days if passport arrives?
C Three of us go and DS to stay with best friend??
D All stay at home ??

DS doesn’t join you on a family holiday because his parents messed up?!

No.
No.
No.

@Remmy123

You need to get emergency passport appointment

Happened to a friend she drove 4 hours to get the passport sorted on the same day

And pop into the bank while you're there to cancel the cheque

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.”

@TrickyD

Thanks, HaveringWavering, that makes sense.

And also the 3 months point everyone else has made! But I think my analysis would still have held up if it had had 3 months pre departure but not 3 months pre return.

And then there's the issue that passports may not be valid until their expiry date if they had up to an extra 9 months added (no longer done now). Now you need to look at the valid from date, add 10 years and that gives your new expiry. Then you take into account the 3 (or 6 for some countries) months you need remaining and it gets even more complicated

Goes off to check validity in all our passports

@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.”

Exactly this. ^ The people who don't have the intellectual capacity to check the dates of their children's passports before booking a family holiday ALWAYS come out with this gem.

If you honestly can't tell what Brexit has to do with OP's situation, maybe you could do with a brain transplant.

You need the transplant - OP didn't check passport expiry - that has ZERO to do with brexit.

The sheer amount of intellectual dishonesty in Brexit supporters is almost on par with Russian politicians.
It's only surpassed by the ridiculous propensity of some people to make everything that has ever gone wrong in the history of the universe a problem caused by Brexit.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

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.

None of you go....rearrange for easter

I love it when a poster wades in with….

Here’s the definitive facts on the issue

And then they get it wrong

@RobotValkyrie