Passport Wait Times Increase Again, Almost Too Late To Get One Before Year’s End

Image: Pile of U.S. passport documents. (photo via iStock/Getty Images Plus/Bet_Noire)

by Laurie Baratti
Last updated: 4:50 PM ET, Wed July 5, 2023

Amid the busy summer season, American travelers’ frustrations are largely aimed at airlines due to a seemingly endless slew of flight disruptions: cancellations, delays, seemingly endless waits in airport queues and holding on phone lines trying to reach customer service.

But, there is also a profusion of prospective travelers who are being similarly let down by the U.S. Passport Office, which has continued to struggle for two years now to provide renewal applicants with their travel documents in a timely fashion.?

The agency’s slow plod through its stacks of passport applications has actually slowed even further, with routine renewal applications now taking as many as 13 weeks, an increase over the previous expectation of 11 weeks. Even expedited service times have increased to a seven-to-nine weeks’ wait, according to the State Department’s?website.?

Oh, and that doesn’t include the time it takes for delivery via the postal service for documents bound in either direction. The bureau added that the postal journey of applications in one direction and printed passports in the other can tack on up to two more weeks’ time on either end of your expected waiting period.?

Not unlike airlines, the Passport Office’s present problems are compounded by the fact that it hasn’t sufficiently rebuilt its workforce to handle the volume of application and renewal requests it’s receiving; and, now that pent-up travel demand has hit its highest-ever levels, they’re falling even further behind.

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Since travel began to bounce back in 2021, the agency has failed to procure adequate resources to tackle the massive backlog of applications that piled up during the earlier days of the pandemic, when passenger volumes quickly became negligible.

During the pandemic, the Passport Office closed most of its offices and cut staffing at its processing centers down to skeleton crews. Reportedly, the government-run authority let go of contractors and reassigned its actual employees away from their former roles in passport processing.

“With COVID, the bottom basically dropped out of the system,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said before a?House subcommittee on March 23.

A State Department spokesperson told Business Insider some months ago that the agency has managed to strengthen its staffing levels this year and is continuing to do some additional hiring. They also noted that the majority of passport applicants do receive their documents within the published timeframes.

Still, some travelers with upcoming overseas vacations are saying that they still haven’t received their passports, despite having submitted their applications several months in advance, leaving them with the unthinkable prospect of having to cancel their costly trips at the last minute. Those who find themselves faced with such circumstances are advised to call their local congressional representatives and request emergency assistance.

The Bureau of Consular Affairs’ webpage does outline “Emergency” application procedures and provide contacts for travelers with departures occurring in 14 days or less, as well as steps to follow for “Urgent” requests for those whose trips will take place within nine weeks.?

A State Department spokesperson also told Insider that customers who have applied, but still have yet to receive their passport within five days of their scheduled departure should contact the National Passport Information Center at 1-877-487-2778 to obtain an appointment at a passport agency location.

Moreover, if you’ve got an international trip on the books and a passport that’s expiring virtually any time before 2024, it’s time to get on the ball, because the anxiety of waiting for four-plus months to see if your renewed passport arrives in time is almost more than most anyone can bear.

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Laurie Baratti

Assistant Editor

Laurie Baratti is an Assistant Editor for TravelPulse. She is a San Diego-based journalist whose work has previously appeared in publications like TravelAge West, SPACE, Modern Home + Living, Montage, and Sandals Life magazines. Travel writing has long been her passion, and she is always looking for excuses to explore the world outside of her native California. Laurie is also a lifelong equestrian, a proud pet-parent, and an underground advocate of the Oxford comma.