Originally Posted by
GUWonder
My "magical back door" is to go in the front door at US embassies/consulates that are located pretty close to airports with non-stop flights to the US. No expedite fee involved, and it also doesn't encourage the application slot squatting that goes on with some of these commercial service providers. And the passport turns are in a tighter range on average this way.
Just a sort of out-of-the-hat January 2022 application that went up for application locator number starting with 71 that meets the conditions indicated in my above post. Application submitted in-person abroad on a Thursday. [Standard application fee, of course.] No application nor status update showed up online at passporstatus.state.gov for application until around Wednesday, which is when the status changed to "in process". On the next day -- that is the first Thursday immediately after in-person submission of application -- the application status update on the state.gov site showed the passport as "mailed" to the embassy/consulate. The applicant may have it in hand within well less than 14 calendar days from date of in-person application, if they care to get it in person from the USG. And that's even with at least one holiday in the picture.