CX HK

I know we are a bunch of travel nuts/ veterans out here with heavily used and stamped passports... but this article seems to show a man who has a legitimate claim to the title of "World's Largest Passport" - 331 pages!

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel...958024/?no-ist

The picture is quite amazing, as well. Anyone top that?

Mauibaby2008

Very interesting - thanks

nit407

Lovely read...Thanks for sharing

GUWonder

World's largest US passport, at least.

Other countries have had a history of bundling individuals' passports together as part of one joint passport for each individual having to "renew".

dvs7310

Very cool, I miss the days of free extra pages. Once it became paid, might as well get a new one for a few bucks more and extend the validity. (Though one adding pages probably never makes 10 years on a standard 52 page anyway).

Japan is one of perhaps the few who still allows adding pages, but not sure if it's more than once. Maybe going forward those will be the largest (still valid) passports.

GUWonder

There are still valid US passports with over 100 pages, and there probably will still be some such US passports in use until at least 2024 or 2025.

Interestingly enough, one of the grounds for receiving a secondary ordinary fee US passport has been that of having a primary valid US passport with additional page inserts in it. I'm curious if Japan too has allowed the same sort of thing (i.e., second Japanese passports with some overlapping validity period) for the same sort of reason and other reasons akin to the US.

CX HK

Speaking of which, I have never seen a Japanese passport with pages added. Being the weird nerd that I am, can anyone post a pic of one?

dvs7310

I've never seen one either, no one I've traveled with travels enough to fill one up. It is significantly cheaper though to get pages added than getting a new passport in Japan, so maybe some of the guys in the trading companies like Mitsubishi and Mitsui would have this.

CX HK

Did a quick Google search and nothing came up... someone on FT must have a picture of one somewhere!

TheTakeOffRush

Mr Oberski's story sounds a lot like the stories from people with AA's AAirpass, back in the day. Transoceanic flights just to catch dinner and a show, then back. Repeat tomorrow.

PS: Are there any AAirpass holders (current? former?) on FT?

GetSetJetSet

Mine has (I think) 116 pages and is valid until 2019. I only have 2 pages left though . I tried to add more pages before the cutoff last year, but they told me that adding any more pages would likely split the spine and invalidate all of my currently valid visas. They wouldn't even consider adding more than 24 new pages anyway, not sure how anyone could get to 300+.

GUWonder

I've seen US passports approaching 200 pages, but never seen any single one with 300+ pages. The way to get US passports with well over 100 pages and close to or into the 200+ page range was to find a sympathetic person at US consulates/embassies willing to insert multiple inserts from the start or early on in the passport's life and then squeeze in an additional insert or two at the last minute prior to a trip after having filled in a rather young passport with all those inserts. But over time, the resistance to do additional inserts increased. I would be surprised if anyone has a passport record file for having been approved for page inserts to put a passport into the 300+ range at any point in the last 8 years or even earlier.

There will be some US passports valid into 2024 that have well over 100 pages in them.

fairviewroad

I would assume that longer passports will eventually become pointless as countries switch to electronic visas. I have no idea if that's actually a "thing" but it seems to make so much sense compared to the archaic piece-of-paper-in-a-book method.

GUWonder

Even with evisas/ETAs/ESTAs, passports are still being stamped by the issuing countries of evisas/ESTAs/ETAs.