Originally Posted by
Emma Heady
With multiple trips booked and knowing the passport is valid for all of those trips I didn’t want to send it for renewal until necessary incase of any delay at the passport office. I know someone whose passport got lost in the system somehow and they weren’t able to get it resolved for quite a while resulting in a missed trip.
We’re only just back from US and going again in 4 weeks by which point the passport has 5 months remaining.
If it’s valid for travel I shouldn’t have to change it because staff aren’t trained properly.
It seems ridiculous that presented with the correct information they could still deny boarding.
Can understand your concern, but with BA, such stories are pretty rare for travel to the USA (Tui has a bit more form with trying to insist on 6 months). Most check in staff will know the correct rule to apply, you'd be pretty unlucky for sometime to try and deny boarding on this basis. If it did happen, all you can do is calmly ask them to check Timatic and escalate to their superiors if necessary, because you know you are correct. Some check-in staff (and even supervisors) have an unfortunate tendency to "double down" when challenged on such things, but you should get there in the end, with some patience.
As posted above, BA would be on the hook for serious compensation due to incorrectly denied boarding, but that wouldn't help you on the day. This is just one data point, but my son travelled to the US with me in April 2023 on BA, with a passport that expired in July 2023, no problem being allowed to travel.
This is the link to the official US government list of countries which do not require 6 month validity on a passport to enter the US, just validity for the intended duration of stay
https://www.cbp.gov/document/bulleti...alidity-update
This list is sometimes referred to as the USA's "6 month club" which is a misnomer since its members are countries that do NOT require 6 months validity, but the correct eligibility is covered in the preamble at the top of the PDF you can access from this link. The UK is on the list, so 6 months validity not required. Perhaps a printed copy of that would be useful as backup at check in.
Originally Posted by
Yetak
Another thing to be wary of is some countries only accept a passport is valid for a period of 10 years, where it is possible to have an UK passport for longer (if the passport was renewed months prior to the previous one expiring) this could mean even though you have 4 months left on a passport it does not confirm to border control policies at your destination country and you’ll be denied boarding.
Originally Posted by
father_ted
This is especially annoying for those with more than one non-British passport, the UK is an outlier in issuing additional passports valid for 10 years.
To my knowledge it is only the EU/Schengen which has the rule about non-member passports (excluding residents) being no more than 10 years old at date of entry. The UK stopped adding extra months to renewed passports in Sept 2018, so this problem is gradually receding, passports issued since then have a maximum 10 year validity. In the case of the OP, though we don't know the age of their daughter, if they have a child passport this would only be valid for 5 years in the UK anyway, so this would not be an issue.