Most people won't do that. Only a very small fringe minority. And is the UK Passport Office so willing to do so for users of just US passports?

I don't disagree but my point is probably 90%+ of the passport carrying population gives this absolutely no thought. It's not that it can't be checked it's more the thought that it even ought to be checked. Barring mass chip failures and travelers delayed or turned back because of it it's not an issue. This is a great site and you can learn a lot here but like many other special interest sites or blogs it's not exactly widely known to the "run of the mill" traveler.

No, per their site the stations are setup to only allow UK passports to read (it's a self-service affair). I've never tried them myself, but I guess they block them to UK passports (why would I try them? Your passport can easily be read with most modern phones except the iPhone).

Mine is a non-chip Passport, and it expires May 2017. My previous passport had the unlucky situation of expiring in 2007. 2007 was the "right before the deadline" year for needing a passport to cross the US border, even by land, so tons of people applied for passports that year, causing newsworthy-long delays in passport processing.

So there are still a very large number of non-RFID passports in circulation.

Yes, passport still come 28 or 52 pages. You can request 52 pages, but if the passport agency see you have not travel much they will not give it to you.

The 52 page passport seems to me to be given to most of those who request it; but that said perhaps it's a product of my mostly seeing passports coming back from applications with a non-US address.

Never understood why it is up to the State to decide how many pages you want. So what if you want more? What if you just got a new job abroad and will anticipate a lot of travel? If they bother to mark the 52 page option, just give it to them :rolleyes:

http://www.jaunted.com/story/2015/3/...are+Going+Away has some interesting publicly-disseminated info from State about the page issue, including indication of how security worries have driven the change.

Does anyone have an idea when the new passports might be seeing the light :of day? All I've seen so far was "In 2016." I need either extra pages or a renewed passport within the next 9-12 months...

If your passport was issued before October 2014 and you want extra pages inserted, the extra pages thing should be done sooner than later. The remaining page insert stock is limited, as is the use of that remaining insert stock; and once the remaining stock runs out, if not well before, the chances to get the inserts for even the current type of passport (issued pre-October 2014 and currently) will be further restricted so as to entirely remove the choice of "extra pages or a renewed passport".

The new passport type won't be seeing the light of day until sometime in 2016, and the switch date is not yet close to being final. But renewing your passport now may not be a solution even if wanting additional page inserts -- I'm saying this because US passports issued since the fall of 2014 are no longer generally entitled to have additional page inserts.

sure hope the next gen passport comes out before April 2016.(that's when my current passport expires) :)

It's best to always have at least six month validity on your passport. So to play it safe you may just have to settle with the current design.

I have multiple nationalities.(US + EU + other)

It's no biggie if my US passport book expires. My US
passport card doesn't expire for a few more years.
I can also travel on my other two non-US passports.
To return to the US, I can just fly to Vancouver and
drive back to Seattle(or take the train), which only
requires a US passport card.

I just want to make sure that I receive the next-gen
US passport in 2016. :)

As to pages, I do have the 52-page version (I do a lot of travelling), but with GE for the USA and SES for Korea, I am finding I am using fewer pages with the only problem of needing pages are with countries which issue full-page visas (China, Thailand, Sri Lanka, etc.). For China, thank goodness, I just got the 10-year visa so I don't need one each year.

Does anyone know (or guess) what the fee for the enhanced U.S. passport will be?