I was recently looking into the idea of getting a passport card, and realized that it only works for land/sea border crossings and not by air. I was wondering why this is the case, seeing how the book is outdated and no one wants to carry something that big when all your information can be stored on a card. I guess my question is, why do I still need a passport book when flying across borders?

But your travel history isn't stored on the card. Neither are visas. So you carry them around.

International travel is, in many ways, a least common denominator scenario. Unless every country agrees to a new protocol then adoption of that new system is necessarily limited because some people will end up traveling to that place and need the "other" option still.

I guess you will have to attached visas on your forehead.

We'll all be microchipped at some point, but we're not there yet, just as not all countries are at compulsory national identity cards.

Perhaps the US can be the vanguard for this the way it demanded other countries to introduce biometric passports.

How big is your passport??????? Mine is about the size of my phone...and thinner.... I'm mystified as to how THAT can be such a burden...

By what metric is the classic passport "outdated"?? You are the only person Ive ever heard suggest that....curious as to how you came to that conclusion....

At this point, it should be on your phone, and if that doesn't work, you should have a card the size of a credit card as a backup. No need to carry around a large booklet not capable of fitting in your wallet, this isn't 1960.

Paper/Sticker Visa = outdated. Make them electronic, throw it onto a card that can fit in your wallet, boom.

Agree. That makes sense theoretically, but once you start recognizing the massive technological and capital investment required by - at the very least - dozens of countries in a way that they would all be able to talk to each other, it looks extremely daunting. You can conclude that it ain't happening any time soon.

Wonderful idea. That will solve the border problem too, since everyone will be able to buy them from Russia or China on the cheap. In fact, put all your assets into Bitcoin and keep them on your phone while you're at it.

Of course the technology exists to eliminate passport books and cards altogether and rely on biometrics alone. All visas and other travel docs could be "attached" to the biometrics file.

But, doing this requires pretty much universal agreement. If you show up at the German border and have not signed your passport, you won't be admitted? Who cares about signatures? Answer: The Germans.

When you enter Schengen, rhe rules are that your passport must be stamped so that it can be seen when you exit. A possible hassle if it is not done.

I am not sure that a cost-benefit analysis makes what you propose worthwhile even if were practical. Putting government employees out of work is not favored in many places.

There is always the option to NOT have passport. It will severely limit your ability to travel, but what's that compared to the "inconvenience" of having a passport.

I think the better option would be to make bilateral agreements with other countries to accept each other's passport/id cards for travel by air. For example, Canadians indicated that they would be OK accepting our passport cards at their airports, but it is our own government that limited the use of these cards to land and sea crossings only. I am pretty sure Irish would also be willing to admit US citizens using passport cards since their own passport cards can be used for international air travel.

Visas still exist. And plenty of countries stamp passports.

We have 48 page passports. An older set has extra pages. At the time we were making yearly or more trips to a visa-required country that only gave single-entry visas.

These days, same country, less travel, long term visas--we will probably be halfway through our 48 pages when the time runs out.

And although a database exists and you can be looked up in theory, in practice it's not always working, your entry wasn't necessarily recorded, the French waved you through at Dover, whatever. The stamps cost almost nothing in either time or money, and they make it easier for both governments and travellers to see how long someone's been in the Schengen area. I can't see there being a push to eliminate them anytime soon.

This works great in continental Europe where nearly every adult is legally required to have a national ID card even if they never go more than a mile from home. In the US, where there's no national ID and our 54 different driving licenses carry no indication of citizenship (or even legal residency, in some cases), most people who travel abroad are going to visit some country that requires the "real" passport book, so an agreement that allowed Americans to travel by air with passport cards would only really help that small subset of people who travel exclusively to Canada but don't always go by land.

It also works in Europe because EU citizens' free movement rights mean that it's impossible for a Belgian to overstay in Ireland, so there's no need for stamps. Other than Canada, I doubt many other countries would admit Americans without something to stamp, especially since the U.S. wouldn't admit those countries' citizens without something to stamp.