Need a latest passport? State Department tells travelers to use a minimum of 6 months before departure

Amid continued unprecedented demand for international travel, the State Department is advising Americans to submit applications for passports a minimum of six months before their scheduled departure dates.

A State Department official said in an email that current processing times are 10 to 13 weeks for routine processing. It takes seven to nine weeks for expedited processing, which costs an additional $60.  

The estimates don’t include the time it takes to your application to travel through the mail; the clock starts when the State Department receives the applying, the official said.

Because some countries require that passports be valid a minimum of six months beyond the dates of individuals’s trips, travelers should check the State Department’s country-specific information pages to find out about entry and exit requirements and other necessary information for the countries they’re visiting.

The agency said that it’s meeting its published processing times within the “overwhelming majority of cases” and that many shoppers receive their passports more quickly. Even so, the State Department has continued to experience a surge in passport demand, the official said. Flyers should rigorously review passport processing times on travel.state.gov before they make any definite or nonrefundable travel plans, the official said.

The State Department said it’s getting about 400,000 passport applications every week following higher-than-normal volumes in January through May that surpassed 500,000 applications every week.

Some weeks, the agency said, it gets twice as many applications marked as pending in comparison with the identical point in fiscal 12 months 2022. Given those fluctuations, the official said, the department is unable to offer an overall backlog number. 

The State Department hopes to return to pre-pandemic processing times by the top of calendar 12 months, the official said.

Nearly 2 million more applications are expected to be processed this fiscal 12 months than within the previous record period, one 12 months before the Covid-19 pandemic, the official said.

So-called revenge travel has continued into 2023, a consequence of pent-up demand from travelers after a yearslong pandemic and the early lockdowns in 2020 that forced many to remain put. The holiday surge is producing record volumes of air travelers.

The Transportation Security Administration reported it processed 2,884,683 flyers Friday — greater than the previous record of two,882,915 on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend 2019.

Allianz Partners USA, which provides travel insurance products, has projected Americans will spend $214 billion on summer vacations this 12 months.

The State Department official said individuals who haven’t yet applied for his or her passports should generally not call the agency for urgent travel appointments greater than 14 days from their travel dates. Individuals who need foreign visas for his or her urgent travel are an exception and may call inside 28 days of their travel to hunt urgent travel appointments. 

Individuals who should travel inside 14 days should call the National Passport Information Center. While the State Department has increased staffing for urgent travel services, including on some weekends, appointments are very limited, and the official said it cannot guarantee that they will probably be available.

Individuals who have pending applications and travel inside five days should check appointment availability by calling 1-877-487-2778, the official said.