Phudnik

In some cases, literally so. For example, Turkey requires a visa fee that varies by country according to what each country charges Turks.

USF03

Regardless of what it is, and regardless of complaints on FT....you don't pay, you don't play. Simple as that!!

I'm going back to Frankfurt in March. My passport was to expire in Feb. I had the forethought to get it renewed in September. Done, no worries, no hassles. Only problem is the "incredible" tan I now have that I didn't have when I went in to get the picture taken. A result of the process they use when scanning the picture.

BingoLoco

Although it may be possible if you have a good reason, normal renewals are only possible within 1 year of expiration. At least thats what the form said.

FrontRow

Shouldn't the lack of passport validity have been picked up when the ticket was purchased? If not, it ought to be...to avoid the kind of check-in hassle AVFlyer experienced.

My last two international tickets (Delta) were purchased through my company's agent, so I don't know how Delta's system works, but I did purchase a set of tix for EWR-TLV last year (on Conti) for my family and myself. IIRC, I had to enter all the passport numbers and expiration dates to ensure we complied with the 6 month requirement.

soitgoes

Really? I don't see that anywhere on the form:
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/79960.pdf
http://travel.state.gov/passport/for.../ds82_843.html

fb3003

any particular reason why you went with passport express? did you shop around? I am thinking about using CIBT.

EchoVictor

FYI, you can get your passport renewed and completely reissued in Manhattan in about 2-3 hours. Cost is $120 which is only $60 more than normal. Federal building at West Houston & Hudson.

CurlyKrakow

For domestic travel in the US, I think acceptability of expired ID's should be more flexible for two simple reasons: 1) it's not actually required with secondary screening, and 2) there are no foreign laws involved, which an airline worker doesn't have the authority to waive anyways.

But for international travel, I think that there are plenty of good reasons that passports should expire. As someone familiar with consular work, the potential for passport/visa fraud -- already a booming business the world over -- would increase even more significantly if valid PPTs never expired. The second-hand market in stolen or exploited PPTs, especially with previously issued visas, would be extremely lucrative. 10 year validity (at least for US passports) seems like a pretty workable compromise between valid security issues and potential renewal hassle for any individual traveler.

In general, all countries charge foreigners the same amount for a visa and/or visa application that their citizens are charged by that country. It's a well established principal of diplomatic/consular relations called reciprocity.

Turkey is actually an exception to this reciprocity system, at least for US citizens -- the last time I went there (Sept '06), a 3 month tourist visa at the airport was 20USD. On the other hand, a Turkish citizen applying for a US visa would have to pay a $131 application fee (aka MRV - 'Machine Readable Visa'), though the actual visa would be issued for free once the application was approved.

Phudnik

Interesting. I had assumed that since there is a sliding scale by country (listed in big signs at the visa window at IST, for example -- Canadians have to pay three times what Americans have to pay for the same visa stamp) that Turkish visa fees are directly proportional to the visa fees for Turkish citizens. Brazil is probably a better example, then.

Jeeves

This link gets you to country specific entry/exit requirements.

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_p.../cis_1765.html

CurlyKrakow

The reciprocity principal is likely better exemplified by other country's relations with Turkey, such as the Canadian visa cost you cited. But there are times (usually for political reasons) when a country will knowingly deviate from this reciprocity system in pursuit of a longer-term advantage.

The best recent example that comes to my mind is when Ukraine stopped requiring visas for US PPT holders for stays of 90 days or less (late 2005/early 2006). They were advocating for an extension of the longest US multi-entry visa available to Ukrainian PPT holders from 5 to 10 years -- but since a direct reciprocal match wouldn't necessarily mean much to US PPT holders, they offered this as an asymmetric benefit instead. AND they did it in advance to try and convince the US to make the corresponding change, instead of it being part of a pre-arranged convention that went into effect concurrently. [No, I don't know the current status of that change re: the extension of the maximum visa validity for Ukrainian PPTs. I can look it up, but it's not right at hand.]

Since the US has a comparatively strong and long-standing positive relationship with Turkey (the recent Armenian Genocide declaration not withstanding), they may have made a similar decision re: US visa fees.

iCorpRoadie

9 yrs 1 mo 1 day left on mine, but Ill run out of pages and the 4 add'l pages I can get before that time if I keep up my flying like I have.

fb3003

how long ago did you do this?

T/BE20/G

I accompanied a friend of mine who did this in September - he had fallen below the required validity for our late September trip to Oktoberfest and Prague. You can make an appointment at any of the passport agency offices by calling 877-487-2778. We made the appointment only 2 days before, though you can even make it same day if there's availability. They do ask for evidence of travel in the next 2 weeks, then we just dropped off the completed application and came back in about 3 hours to pick up the new passport... simple as could be! I don't know why anybody who has convenient access to a passport office would renew by mail - the expedite fee is the same as in person, but in person you have the security of having the passport back right away - no waiting for days.

The offices are available in the following cities:
Boston
Chicago
Aurora, CO
Norwalk, CT
Honolulu
Houston
LA
Miami
New Orleans
New York
Philadelphia
San Francisco
Seattle
DC

You really have a lot of choices!

travel.state.gov

gsw

Thanks for this information. It should save me (and others reading this thread) some future grief. On another note, I am glad that you received so much help from the Delta staff. In my experience, they are usually great, but this goes beyond great. I hope that you got the names of the agent and supervisor, and wrote Delta a letter praising their service.