If you said you were flying in 5 weeks, but weren't, then you were trying to bump yourself up. You got your passport back in 7 weeks, a timely fashion, it seems with all the congestion going on. What happens to the people who really are traveling in 5 weeks, and don't get their passport because you wanted to have your passport back quicker?

I'm not defending the State Department's handling of the Passport fiasco this year. I knew it would be a cluster***k, as people will always wait until the last moment to get a passport, when they've been warned for 2 years about the impending need for one.

You're not alone in this, of course. Fudge a few days, sure. But a couple of weeks just puts more strain on the system.

If you have read all of this thread, you'll also have read that most people getting the RFID passport didn't get extra pages. I renewed mine a bit early in 2005, so I didn't have to wait when the demand for passports was high, and as a bonus, had no problem getting a 48 pager. (Now half full!)