Originally Posted by
RobertS975
The whole passport thing is a bit of beaurocracy at its finest. I mean one can cross borders by land all over Europe without so much as anyone even stopping you.
And what is so magical about an expired passport? It just means you didn't pay your $$$ to your government. Do you suddenly cease to exist if your passport is expired?
And visas are another way of extracting $$$ from the traveler.
I know of at least three major world players that will refuse their own citizens if they do not have a valid passport.
Originally Posted by
avflyer
Just yesterday, I ran into a colleague flying on another airline BOS-AMS and her expiration date is the same as mine. She was not denied boarding so this is obviously only enforced if they bother looking at the local rules during checkin (which the DL agent did do). She agent did point out that not only might the airline get fined (heavily) if authorities in AMS catch this, but that at DL now, the attending agent will be singled out for the infraction so you can't really blame them for looking.
From what I understand, Delta has a kind of cool check in system behind the counter that prompts them for required documents and they have to enter the information as they go along in order to prevent getting fined.