Military guys and passports
 

For you military guys...when airlines request you bring your passport to an interview is the brown one that DoD gives you acceptable or do you have to go get your own?? Anybody had to do this??

I applied for my civilian passport before the interview and took the DOD passport with me. You must have a civilian passport when you actually start to work for the company.

TipTip,

It is funny you asked this because I just went through this whole process. I only had the red one that I got through the Navy prior to my first deployment. This is for official business (military business) only. By mistake, I turned in my civ one when I got the military one and the US Passport office still had on record that I had a current passport, only I did not have it in my possesion. Long story short, I had to turn in a form saying that my civ passport was lost and they re-issued me one from scratch. The whole thing took about 5 weeks, so if you are in a time crunch look online about a possible local passport office near you and they can cut the time down. It cost about $70 plus the $15 for pictures. Good luck.

DT

Brown, red, maroon, whatever the color I think it's still a diplomatic passport vice a military one (could be wrong, it's been awhile). The blue one will be required for the civilian flying world.

One would think that already having a military passport would help things move along when applying for a civlian version. Yeah, not so much... wish it only cost me $70

What he said...

Actually, I think the interviewing companies are looking for proof of your US citizenship. An official passport is one easy way to confirm this. Whether the red diplo passport would satisfy this requirement is questionable. We have several pilots flying at UPS that are non-res aliens, or res-aliens -- both carrying their green card and resident countries passport.

Once you get onboard an airline who's schedules requires passports and visas, how you get them and who pays is up to each company or your contract.

At UPS, all fees for passport and visa applications, and renewals are paid for by the company. They even expidite it, so you get it back within ten business days. For new hires, this is done during BI, depending upon your fleet/domicile assignment.

One pain is that the passport is usually good for ten years, but many visas (like the PRC) are only good for two or five years, so you've gotta stay on top of them.:rolleyes: