Yes. And a pop-up tells me to go to an enrollment center to have the info updated.

I may need to travel in mid of April so I had mentioned the same on my apolication. The passport office looking at the date called me and asked if I wanted to expedite it. Looking at how my application has been hitting the wall at every juncture, I said Yes. Next day, I get an email saying my passpoer has been approved and its shipped. I should be getting in on Monday as per the tracker.
Hopefully this information helps others who are looking for answers.

I was against expedite processing but looking at the numerous delays in the process, I just settled for it. Remember, how much time we have to spend following up with senators, usps, passport office and the endless hours checking status on pp website. The anxiety is not worth it. My 2 cents!!

To my perhaps poor eyes tonight, they seem to have that US passport front cover showing as black even as they describe it as blue. The black front cover US passports are diplomatic ones.

It looks like the diplomatic passport clearly states diplomatic on the cover:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/prad...-per-type.html
Maybe the new version has only been issued to a happy few so far...
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/prad...-per-type.html

I was commenting about the earlier post's link having the (ordinary) passport cover's color appearing to be black (rather than blue), but that site having the color labeled as "blue" even as it appeared as black to my eyes.

US Diplomatic passport blanks' OFC and OBC color are not blue in color nowadays and generally haven't been for quite some. They are black OFC and OBC, as the latter post's link more correctly labels the color. But the link supplied for the non-Diplomatic book has the passport OFC appear more like black than blue to my eyes even as it's labeled the color as blue. [I've handled a whole variety of passports over the years.]

I would be surprised if the idea was to have US Diplomatic passport blanks issued with the same OFC and OBC color as the ordinary US passport blanks being used for passports being sought by most people in this thread -- no less so when the description details on the links have the right color labels for what has been traditional.

Black isn't blue to my eyes, but the links you supplied above seem to have black and blue as both looking the same to my eyes regardless of how they label the color. Does it look different to you in terms of the color of the outside covers?

Somewhat off-topic, but...

While I haven’t handled a whole lot of passports in my life but I have worked a bit with color models in both print publications and web design. Perceived color is a ‘slippery’ thing. When I look at something with only my right eye, I ‘see’ a slightly different hue than when I look at the same thing (under the same lighting conditions) with only my left. The perceived color (or colour) of scanned or photographed images presented on screen depends on a host of variables including lighting, the equipment used to capture the image, the equipment used to portray the image, settings applicable to both, the background context of the image, and the viewer’s ‘perception’ - my loose term for the rather complex interaction between the eyes and the brain.

The standard issue U.S. passport isn’t just ‘blue’, it’s ‘navy blue’. More like an indigo that in certain lighting conditions will appear to be closer to black. If a standard and a diplomatic passport were scanned on the same device at the same time, I daresay you would be able to perceive the differences in the two when looking at them side-by-side. Viewing either one, in isolation, against a white background, may well make the dark blue seem to look like black. Also, viewing the same objects under sunlight or even artificial ‘white light’ rather than on a screen would almost certainly reveal their color differences.

If you want to know more, look up ‘gamut’ as it applies to color reproduction and perception.

My brand new passport is definitely Navy Blue.

The end
 

I received today the old passport and the birth certificate, sent from Sterling, VA on March 24th.

The end... until the next saga -----

I sent my passport in for renewal in mid-March non-expedited, assuming no need for travel...until we just hopped on the BA fare sale and bought tickets for July. I'm really hoping my passport is back before that!

Very good points by both of you. When I'm comparing this picture:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/prad...ge-336992.html
to that picture:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/prad...ge-188345.html
the new passport version does seem to have a dark blue cover to me, but I have to confess now that I can't tell apart my blue and grey socks in the morning. So I am not the most reliable chap to trust on these matters.

I find it odd that there's a new US passport version around yet few (anyone?) seem to have had one issued. There's no talk about it on the internet either. But surely the Europeans didn't just invent it for their identity papers database. Maybe it's delayed until the current issues and delays clear up.

According to the testimonies given here you should be fine, and if you start to worry you can always request to get it expedited, which seems to work fairly reliably.

The way this works is that the US sends over information to international partners so as to make them aware of the security features in US passports to look for to confirm that the passports they may encounter are legitimate US passports. This stuff usually gets put into a book for border guard types to use and/or into a look-up file for computer use, and sometimes the updates are done even before the passports are being issued in general circulation.

Some of the reference material used by passport control in the Schengen zone had alerted them to the fact that US passports are no longer to have additional page supplements added to them. Well, guess what happens at times nowadays when some of the Schengen passport control personnel encounter my travel party members' US passports with the supplemental pages added into the passport booklets? If they are aware of that change in US policy and notice the supplements -- and some of them do notice, more often women than men -- then they at times may have to go back and look up when that change in policy came into place. :D [The elimination of the practice of inserting supplemental pages into US passports was done on the basis of "security" too.]

Today when comparing the links, the diplomatic passport cover is definitely darker ordinary passport cover. My eyes must have been especially poor yesterday, so now I'll have to go check my socks from yesterday and today. :D

Yes GU, and those border control officers - when talking about the supplemental pages - all seem to be concentrated in Germany.

I've encountered the supplemental page thing mostly in Schengen countries to the north or west of Germany, but I also had less use for transiting Germany on trips from/to the US in recent years pre-pandemic than going via CPH, ARN, OSL and AMS.

Let's see how many years it will be until using the current general circulation stock for ordinary US passports increase the risk of some additional scrutiny because passport control assumes that the "older" stock should no longer be around and/or isn't legitimately valid. This kind of thing used to happen at times with some people who were on the tail years of validity for the green cover US passports.

3/30 Status on Passport Application Status Page: Application Not Found (both applications).

Web page says if online status is "not found" after 2 weeks to call the center. Called around 3:50pm; 42 minutes on hold before speaking to service agent. Agent also did not find either application. Agent stated applications for minors are processed in Philadelphia after going through a postal security screening center which is very backed up; said check in another week and call back if still "not found."

The postal service is indeed backlogged -- I won't get started here about how long regular mail takes internationally from the US nowadays -- and that also has consequences for how things land in Philadelphia with State getting started, but sometime the online status being "not found" at some points in the process doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of how much longer the process will take.