US Passport Oddity - Different Dates of Issue for Passports with Consecutive Numbers
Jun 3, 2019, 1:36 pm
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US Passport Oddity - Different Dates of Issue for Passports with Consecutive Numbers
I didn't know where to post this and just felt the need to share. We applied for passports for my children approximately six weeks ago. They both had child passports that were expiring later this year and are now old enough for adult passports. We applied the same day, the same place. I just received both of them in the mail at the same time. They have consecutive passport numbers, so fairly confident they were processed at the same time. The oddity is the date of issue. My son's says May 30 & my daughter's says May 23. The one that was issued on May 30 has a passport ID ending in a 5 and the one on the 23rd ends in a 6.
Jun 3, 2019, 4:29 pm
#2
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Since this is not an issue which affects one's ability to travel safely with minimal hassle, I'll move this thread to the USA forum, where US passports are generally discussed.
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TWA884
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Jun 4, 2019, 7:53 am
#3
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I didn't know where to post this and just felt the need to share. We applied for passports for my children approximately six weeks ago. They both had child passports that were expiring later this year and are now old enough for adult passports. We applied the same day, the same place. I just received both of them in the mail at the same time. They have consecutive passport numbers, so fairly confident they were processed at the same time. The oddity is the date of issue. My son's says May 30 & my daughter's says May 23. The one that was issued on May 30 has a passport ID ending in a 5 and the one on the 23rd ends in a 6.
Jun 4, 2019, 8:14 am
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I've seen same-day submissions of passport applications for identical twins and for fraternal twins. And there can be a gap in time between when the passport is issued to one of the twins and when the passport is issued to the other twin. So I don't really find it all that odd that there was a gap in passport issue dates between the two children.
Jun 4, 2019, 2:33 pm
#5
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Uninformed guess - could it be that the numbers are allocated at the start of the process and used for internal identification, but the issue date depends on when the internal processing completes?
Jun 6, 2019, 1:14 pm
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When you also factor in that they were consecutive numbers and they arrived in the mail on the same date, 7 days between issue dates sure seems strange. Especially if you add in the fact that the lower numbered passport was issued after the other one - and again all numbers the same except last digit.
Relying upon US passport number sequencing to necessarily follow passport issuance date sequence for detecting fraudulent US passports has not been a very highly reliable means of detecting fraudulent US passports for quite some time at least. That’s a bit of an indication of why it’s not strange to me.
Jun 11, 2019, 6:30 am
#7
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That would be my guess as well - you're assigned a number when the form gets initially processed, but the final issuance can remain different.