Canada
 

Do we have to have our passports with us or can we have copies. I have to send my current pp in when I renew and that might put a kink in things

we are headed up there and we were told to have our passports in hand. I would cough up the extra whatever it costs and get the expedited service, there is a chance you can see a 7 day turnaround especially on a renewal

What up punk! You might need to go to the the office in Chicago personally and do it our you'll never see it for a few months. Since they are so backed up with passport requests. Even the expedited service has taken long periods of time. Good luck and call me sometime.

Get your CP or base manager to write you a note on a company letterhead affirming that you need expedited service to perform your duties as an airline pilot. Then go to the passport office in person, explain the urgency of the situation and be prepared to pay for the expedited service.

i just read that they passport office is caught up and expedited service is down to a week or two. Yes, must have your passport.

Ohhhhhh Caaaannnnaaaadaaa.......ourr home aand native lanndddd....

D-dogg, What up big daddy?! how's everything going? Loving EWR? It looks like I'm gonna stop by the Chicago office. Maybe on one of those long layovers. Maybe not. There was one form for passport renewal where you didn't have to send the old one with the application. Maybe I'll do that. Who knows. anyway peace

I just went through this back in July. That form you speak of is basically for if you've lost your passport. As soon as they get to the processing stage of the form, they will cancel your current passport and you won't know when that is. You could get hung up at the border with a passport that is no longer valid.

What I did at the advice of the lady that handles passports at my post office, is to send in the renewal, pay for expedited service, send it in via express mail, along with a self addressed express mail return envelope. We also included a note saying that I was a professional pilot that frequently travels across the border and needed it back as soon as possible. It all cost extra $$ but my company paid for it. I had the new passport within a week.

Yeah, my dad applied for his first one about a month ago. Total time from sending in the application to receiving it in the mail WITHOUT the expedited service: 15 days. That's still quite a while if you do a lot of flying across the border, but it appears that the backlog that the state department was facing in the middle of the year has finally been handled. Good luck!