cphurley

I dealt with a very similar situation about 10 years ago and had a friend use AA Cargo to put passport on a specific AA routing DCA-DFW-LAX for the passport to arrive the night before my brother's flight LAX-Europe. Back then it was a straight-forward process; the friend put passport in an envelope and went to DCA airport to AA Cargo desk. She paid (around $80 if I recall) and the envelope was tagged just like a bag with bag tags that could be tracked. Upon arrival in LAX, we had to go to AA baggage service desk and show and ID to retrieve the item. From poking around it appears that maybe you need to setup an account now before sending something but I didn't spend a ton of time looking into it (https://www.aacargo.com/learn/start.html)... just a data point that it did work for me in the past.

redtop43

I know that there are airline-based cargo services who can ship same day, pretty much the same as if you checked a bag.

I realize that the issue is now resolved, but I checked on Delta Dash. For airport to airport service, with a cutoff of one hour before the flight and pickup one hour after landing, the price is $88. They will also do door to door but I didn't look up prices, and they can do pickup without delivery.

I think other airlines have similar services.

Maybe it's just that I spent time in the consulting world back before email existed, although TBH while I used FedEx overnight a lot, I never personally used same-day delivery. But I knew people who did.

I assume the OP would have happily paid $100ish (I'm guessing a tad more since they probably would have wanted the passport picked up in LAX rather than relying on a friend to drop it at the airport) to resolve this mess, and I'm surprised no one posted it as an effective solution in time.

There are also courier services that will provide a similar service, although quite a bit more expensive, but it could easily be cheaper to have a pax check one or (more likely) more heavy pieces of luggage than pay same-day freight prices.

Often1

I would consider calling AA and asking if they would contact FJ for approval to push the ticket through. With FJ approval, AA can issue the ticket immediately and eliminate last minute issues at the airport. On the other hand, if there is a real FJ problem, might as well know that sooner rather than later.

CPMaverick

FINAL UPDATE

I got a call from AA. Turns out LAX-NAN priced at 30k one-way, while the BNA-NAN was 40k. So they refunded 10k miles and ~$6. That's the good news.

The bad news is that when they tried to rebook the ticket on AA the FJ space got canceled. I asked about this when they called me, but was reassured it would be fine. It wasn't. Luckily, I had been watching every 15 minutes. When the FJ PNR showed as canceled I called AA. They were very confused and put me on hold while they called FJ. They managed to reinstate the ticket before it was too late. I was on hold about 35 minutes while they sorted it out.

Each time I called the first agent I spoke to was pretty useless, but they transferred me to the International agents who were very, very good.

Everything is now confirmed on all PNRs, and we even managed to retain our previous seat assignments.

In the end it cost me 8k AA miles and ~$75 to sort this out (along with about 75 minutes on the phone and most of the day posting here or fretting ). Lesson learned anyway.

Thank you all again for your help. I think I was really fortunate to get this sorted without too much damage.

JY1024

Glad everything worked out in the end!! And thanks for posting this final update. Who knows...maybe someone else will end up in a similar situation in the future and can benefit from your predicament and the suggestions shared here. ^

donotblink

Not sure how many others do this here, but about 2 years ago, I started taking my passport on every domestic trip with me, because my travel plans started becoming more fluid, and it's usually better to have it than not have it.

mvoight

I would choose the AA air cargo route over UPS, FedEx, etc...... especially given my experience with them this past month.
That could get it on the next flight, although I have no clue on th cost.

sleuth

THIS is what I was thinking too. Have the roomate text a photo of the picture page of the passport, and then explain to the check in agent that the passport is in LA and you will retrieve it during the 10 hour layover. If she lives in LA and that’s where the passport is, and you have a 10 hour layover at LAX, surely she has a drivers license proving her LA residency. Seems fairly cut and dry to me.

Are agents not able to manually type in passport info?

flyerCO

I do this also. It has helped out a couple of times where I've been able to use an international connection to resolve an IRROP situation. Ie connect via YVR or two/three years ago via AMS. (AMS was due to a ground stop at JFK of all westbound flights, thus going via AMS got me to LAX sooner than waiting for an available flight west)

eponymous_coward

Doesn’t prove anything. Imagine that OP’s GF is an accused criminal who was ordered to surrender a passport and not travel internationally; but she has a picture of the passport on a phone...

(Not that this is the case, but it’s a reason you need your passport on you- you can actually be ordered to surrender it.)

Agents are being asked to verify that people have passports on their person, not excuses for why it’s not available at checkin and promises to fix that real soon now. If they screw up it can actually cost the airline money. There are reasons why they won’t accept “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”.

CPMaverick

I've never heard of a photo being of any use for a document check.

Showing that a passport exists isn't why the document check is required, and showing residency does not prove the passport is at your residence. This information may have been useful if I had planned to argue for an exemption... but certainly no guarantee and too risky for me.

Uzzar

Yes, I have had passport data entered manually when re-checking in at airport with less than 90 minutes to flight. Whether or not AA policy would allow it with just a photo is another question.

Glad OP was able to resolve!

flyerCO

Some airlines do this when checking in via app. They have you take a photo and you've now completed document check. (some only use it to populate the fields and you must still show it, AA fallsin this group)

FlyingEgghead

So how exactly does it cost the airline money if they will require the passport before the *international* departure and can deny boarding at that point in its absence? No immigration violation has occurred and any complaint by the passenger (if they have the gall to raise one) can be ignored because they were specifically aware of the need to have the passport before that flight.

flyerCO

They must carry a passenger who may not qualify to continue on. If flight is overbooked by one, this means paying someone even though international passenger may not be able to fly on. Two, cost to then fly passenger back to origin if they dont get passport. Third and last, agent at international flight might not pay attention and board passenger anyway. Ie some issue comes up requiring agent to do something, and with boarding already underway,they simply scan passenger on. (I had that happen, luckily for airline I did indeed have my passport and it was valid)

Bottom line 1/2 are the likely cost issues. Itd matter less, when we were back in days of half full flights.