Urgent advice needed!! Passport expiration time

[NSWK]

We are travelling last minute (hopefully) to Spain tomorrow for half term, and have just realised our child's passport has two months and three weeks until it expires. It looks like we need to have a full three months on a child's passport to travel. We have only just realised this and are travelling tomorrow afternoon so it is too late to renew the passport.

Does anyone have any experience? We are hoping to fly with BA from Gatwick to Malaga, both parent's passports have, in excess of, 6 months. Is there a chance they will let us fly (we are only going for five days) or are we mad to even go to the airport?

Thank you in advance, all advice gratefully received.

Yesssss! So pleased you made it! Have a wonderful holiday 🏝️

Crikey!
I’m cuffed to bits for you all but really confused about how this can happen.
Have a great trip x

I wonder if the fact it was so late helped - no doubt it was going to be a pain in the arse of paperwork for the passport person and he/she thought 'I really cannot be bothered for what is clearly a holidaymaker'

Yes, or they were most likely coming to the end of their shift, tired and didn’t notice

i’m genuinely surprised that it didn’t do a big red ❌ when swiped though. Perhaps that only happens if actually expired.

I’m pleased the OP got through but it makes a bit of a mockery of the rule if some people manage to get through anyway. Many will have not been allowed to get on their planes.

I bet you’re so glad you tried it! Have a lovely holiday.

The reason the airline might not allow you to fly is if they know/think you might not be allowed in at the other end, because your passport/visa/etc doesn't meet the conditions. In the case of the OP, they will be flying back to the UK on UK passports, and UK citizens can enter even if their passport is expired (what are they going to do — make you live airside at Gatwick until the passport office sends you a new one?)

This is why the OP's choice to check in online and only take hand luggage was so smart. As a result, nobody at Gatwick will have looked at their passports until they were getting on the plane, and at that point the staff are only looking to see that the name matches the ticket.

Phew!! Enjoy..

At most Spanish airports, most people arriving from the UK still go through the pre-Brexit e-gates. These only check that the passport is still valid and that your face matches the photo. They don't check anything to do with the Schengen admission rules for non-EU citizens (which is what now applies to UK passport holders) because when they were installed, everyone going through them was an EU citizen. The occasional Indian or American tourist arriving from the UK always just went to an officer at a desk.

These e-gates have not been updated, so they still just check that the passport is valid and genuine. Post-Brexit, after going through the e-gates, UK passport holders then also have to go to a desk to get a stamp for entering Schengen. At that point the officer might check the expiry date against your return air ticket, or they might flick through and read the stamps to count the days that you've spent in the Schengen area. But they probably won't. They might not even swipe your passport on their computer. There are 100 other people waiting behind you, and you're there with DH and a child and luggage looking like the harmless tourists that you are. And in this case, it's nearly 1am and the officer wants to go home.

All of this will change with the new EES kiosks, planned for the autumn of 2024. They will read your passport and see how long you've been in the Schengen area (no more stamps), and also take and store your photo and fingerprints. The OP's family would not have got away with this adventure under the new system. Or perhaps they might, but it would have required an explicit waiver from the border officer to override the kiosk going "beep", rather than them just not bothering to look.

From May 2025, if it doesn't slip, you will need an ETIAS (online pre-travel authorisation, like the US ESTA) to travel to Europe. Airlines will be checking those systematically, and you will probably have to provide the ETIAS number in order to check in. So in that case the OP would not even have been able to get on the plane at Gatwick, because the ETIAS system would have flagged up the child's passport as being invalid. At that point, the system will be "fair" for everyone.

These things take time. The Schengen passport stamping rules, and the facilities to deal with them especially at regional airports, were never designed for the volume of non-EU arrivals that has been caused by Brexit.

Or maybe they happened to read OP's post on MN and sympathised 🩷

That is interesting and very useful to know @samarrange
Thank you

Brilliant news OP. Have a great time

OP glad you have gotten there. Can I jump on for some similar advice. We are going to South Africa soon. My 5 year olds passport expires 4 month after our return date. It says on gov.com that south africa entry needs 30 days post return date. So in theory it's fine. But I have heard quite a few times about needing 6 months on a passport. Is this 6 months only for specific countries? So her passport will be ok to travel on?

Try www.iatatravelcentre.com. if you tell it where you are going, what countries you are transiting through and your passport issue and expiry dates it will tell you if your passport is OK as well as any visas you might need etc.

Look specifically at a SA gov website for entry requirements and follow them. Unless it’s changed you also need birth certificates btw.

Thank you. We don't need birth certificates as travelling with both of the children's parents. Also it's for South African children leaving the country I think due to child trafficking. But good to check!

For almost a year after Brexit, everyone including Gov.uk was saying "You need six months on your passport to travel to the EU". This was based on a misunderstanding of the rules, which are that you need 3 months after your intended day of departure, and you can stay for up to 90 days. So if you intend to stay 3 months in the EU, you need 6 months. But for a fortnight you only need 3 1/2 months (the generally accept a return air ticket as proof of your intended departure day). This has now been fixed, and the airlines are all up to speed too. Having to have six months on your passport is actually quite rare.

For what it's worth, I couldn't find a South African government web page saying that UK tourists only need 30 days validity after their intended date of return. But I found several pages saying that you only need 30 days validity if you need a visa, and visa customers always get tougher conditions. So if the UK government also says 30 days after your intended departure date, you will be fine.

Remember that whether we're talking about Spain or South Africa, these are countries that welcome tourists, and especially UK tourists, with open arms. Nobody at the airport is getting a bonus for hitting someone who has paid for a safari holiday with a gotcha. In fact I suspect that tourists often get way in borderline situations for exactly this reason.

They’ve changed it then! In 2019 with both parents travelling all on British passports we did need the birth certificates too. Tedious!

Why would you not be able to fly????

You are always allowed to go back to your own country, even if the passport has expired

I have a friend who lives in Spain.last year he took his daughter to visit family in London. Her passport expired while they were here and she had to stay until he could get another sorted.

Not quite the same, OP’s son’s passport has not expired

Glad this had a happy ending! Enjoy your holiday!

On this occasion I'm so glad I was wrong.

I would have felt very bad if I had been wrong to suggest that OP would probably get away with it, although I think she had probably decided to take the chance anyway!

Well I've just checked in for a flight tomorrow and I've put the wrong DOB in for one of us. It won't let me go back and change it so I'm hoping that's not an issue 😬