AA Passport requirements exceeding country of travel
 

Not sure where this really belongs, but learned something interesting today. With the State Dept not processing passports, travel is becoming dicey for those with expiration dates coming up-not to mention those sitting in piles to process at passport offices. Anyway, we travel to Aruba often and many people are asking about Aruba's passport requirements on some message boards. There's are pretty straightforward. Passports just have to be valid for length of intended stay. This is posted both on the US State Dept Website and Aruba's website. There was some back and forth about a blanket "six month" rule-which exists for many countries.

It then surfaced that AA has their own rule. Six months from date of entry into foreign country:
​​​​​​Passports must be:

• Valid for at least 6 months after the date you enter a foreign country.

https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/...nal-travel.jsp

I have never been that close and am not now. My issue is, can an airline have a rule that supersedes the country's requirements? Under normal circumstances, I'd check the country and what they wanted-not the airline. I wouldn't think an airline would be allowed to have a different rule. I'm not sure about other airlines. Didn't check them, but I believe United uses a tool to determine what you need and AA was the only airline mentioned as having their own requirements.

I have never been that close and am not now. My issue is, can an airline have a rule that supersedes the country's requirements? Under normal circumstances, I'd check the country and what they wanted-not the airline. I wouldn't think an airline would be allowed to have a different rule. I'm not sure about other airlines. Didn't check them, but I believe United uses a tool to determine what you need and AA was the only airline mentioned as having their own requirements.

I don't see why an airline cannot make such a rule. It reminds me of VIrgin Voyages require 6 months of passport validity for closed loop cruises that would generally not require a passport for US Citizens.
(Not a good year to start a cruise line as their inaugural cruise season has been moved from April to July to October. I have a casino comped suite and would really like to go somewhere)
I am curious to know if anyone has gotten around the AA requirement of 6 months for international travel. I thought they would just rely on what TImatic told them

AA, like UA and many other airlines, uses TIMATIC to verify passengers comply with applicable regulations. Save for a rogue or untrained agent, I’ve never seen AA enforce requirements beyond what each country actually requires.

That said, airlines can be subject to (severe) financial penalties if they board a passenger who does not satisfy the requirements of the arrival country, so they have an incentive to be cautious. I don’t see anything that precludes an airline from imposing other requirements that are at least as stringent as the applicable regulations, if they wanted to do so.

I would be concerned if my passport was valid for less than 6 months, because AA has a stated policy on this.

You’d have to be willing to escalate the hell out of it if challenged, and still accept the risk of being ultimately denied boarding... though I know people who have flown AA with <6 months remaining on their passport when the destination country did not require it.

In any normal circumstance I’d always renew before then just because I want my passport to be valid for any country I might happen to visit. But these are not normal times.

And, just for the record, the passport processing facilities are reopening (although I would still imagine processing will be slower than before):

https://travel.state.gov/content/tra...passports.html
Edited to add - they do, in fact, discourage new applications.

I know this six month rule has been in effect ever since I can remember. In fact, you can’t even book if the passport expiration is within that window.

You don't need to provide passport info to book.

If an airline ever actually enforced passport validity requirements different from what TIMATIC says, I would (a) be very surprised, and (b) massively pissed off.

My bad, you have to provide a passport number before you fly.

As far as I know, the airline can have any requirements they want. They have an incentive to have strict requirements so as to not pay the penalties for delivering a non-admittable passenger.

I always get my passport renewed well in advance, so as to not bump up to the six month rule.

The issue facing people now-and the reason for this being so topical-is that people can't renew now. The State Dept is just coming back online after being shuttered for 3 months. People held their passports-as I would have done-and now with travel in August/Sept etc they meet the Aruba requirements but not AA's. They likely won't know until checking in online or at the airport.

This has been reported for AA and Aruba. Many travelers are inexperienced going there and don't push back.

That makes no sense at all. What if the country changes its requirement so that the airline's policy is too lenient? This is precisely why airlines subscribe to TIMATIC, which is the definitive, up to date resource for entry requirements.

IATA TIMATIC is what every airline uses, I’m guessing by convention with IATA. If I had any question I’d have them look it up or even print the TIMATIC result. You can use United’s version: https://www.united.com/en/us/timatic?i=TIMATIC. I doubt an airline can superimpose some rubbish policy on international treaties.

(Sidebar: My friend Alan MacAry is Captain of the Scarlet Lady and has certainly been dealing with incredible changes since their initial arrival in Miami.

https://www.elliott.org/blog/gate-ag...s8G_GI88F9Kgk8

Seems to have happened in the Bahamas as well.