Renewing a US Passport

[375 Ruger Fan]

One of the joys of being retired is flexibility of schedule. My non-hunting wife decided we needed to go on a non-hunting trip to Turkey, on sort of short notice. It's basically a tour of early Christian churches and other biblical related stuff. Sent the money to the tour group organizing the trip and booked our flight on Turkish Air. It was all too easy. Then we read the fine print on getting into Turkey, you need to have 6 months remaining on your passport, the day you leave Turkey. My wife's passport was going to have about 5 months remaining. The trip is in a couple of months.

I quickly got online and checked the various ways to get an expedited passport The US State Department is beta testing an online renewal system, but it's not ready for primetime. We ended up mailing in a paper renewal form with a passport photo stapled to the form. Paid the extra fees, around $200 in all, and three weeks later we received the new passport. Pretty impressive!

Now if I could just get my Global Entry renewal, which is going on six months.

 

[JimP]

When I renewed my PP last fall just through regular channels it only took around 4 weeks which really surprised me.

But with the way that problems come up anymore I suggest that people start the renewal process a year before your current one expires.

 

[Seavas]

Same situation for me when getting ready for a Guatemalan fishing trip last year. With 4 months to spare I sent in my renewal thru the standard process and received my new passport about 6 weeks later.

 

[Cucuy]

Just renewed mine and my wife’s. My teen boys applied for their first ones. Didn’t pay for expedited because we’re a year out from our Namibian safari. Four weeks including shipping to and from!