For my qualifying emergency I called the duty officer, explained the situation, selected a 9am appointment, spent not even 10 minutes in the passport office and was told to come back to pick it up at 2pm. Walked in and was handed an envelope in less than a minute. Most pleasant government experience, by far — it just doesn’t scale.

Where are you seeing the ability to do it online? You can't as far as I can tell (I just did it).

> "Currently, the process requires filling out a renewal application called DS-82, providing a passport-sized photo, and calculating fees, plus tossing the current passport and potentially other identification papers in the mail. “It’s scary to mail in your [old] passport, marriage certificate, and other documents and hope you’ll get them back,” Rathner says."

You need to print the forms, staple a proper photo to them, and mail all your crap via USPS. The only thing you can do online is print the form (you can fill in the data first, but that's not the hard part).

When I hear "you can already do everything online" I think click submit and be done. You can't currently do that. It's barely a step above picking up the forms at USPS (where you have to go anyway).

There was a beta website that let you do the most straightfoward sorts of renewals online (renewing a "normal" passport and having it shipped to the US).

Yeah that's what the article mentions, but sounds like that's not available to most of the public (and the comment I replied to seemed to not be talking about that?)

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/have-pa...

In the right sidebar:

    Passport Forms
    DS-82: Renewal Application
    Fill Out Online

From what I recall, I was able to submit everything electronically and mail in my passport by itself.

Yeah - I'm pretty sure that's what I did.

It has you fill out the forms electronically, but all that does is put the text into the field which you then have to print, staple your photo to, and mail.

You can't submit anything online.

That's interesting, the OP was I guess not quite right on this.

Not having to mail in your current passport is huge though. I hate being without a passport for the 2-3 months it currently takes, even if I have no travel planned (and what if I did?).

There were a lot of major delays during the pandemic. Otherwise, you can get a new passport very quickly but you might want to pay a visa/passport service to handle it for you--although I'm not sure they add a lot of value these days.

I think last time I renewed was pre-pandemic, but post-Trump, which I don't recall what that had to do with it, but do recall that passport renewals were already seriously slowed down -- I think I had to wait about 6 weeks.

I don't know for sure what it was before that, since the last time I renewed was 10 years before that.

But being without a passport for even 2 weeks makes me nervous. It's a security blanket to know I have it to make last-minute international travel possible if necessary.

An online renewal where you don't have to send your old passport in and can keep it until your new arrives is a huge thing. (Granted, your old passport will probably become invalid at some point before you receive your new passport, but after it's actually been created. Still the time without a valid passport will be minimal).

You can get same day passport at a State Department office. Even without an appointment, if you’re willing to risk not being seen that day.

Did that recently change? I had to renew my passport at the office this year and it was very strictly by appointment only.

They don’t want you to know but I recently did a same day renewal at Seattle and like Chicago and SF’s offices, there is a line for people without appointments. I’d say I saw 60 people go to that one and maybe half got helped - if that’s helpful info.

If by "do everything online" you mean print out a few forms and go do it in person, then yep you can do it online!

My passport was expired in 2019, and I had a trip to Germany, meaning I had to renew it.

I was actually amazed how efficient the system for passports was. I mailed in my old passport and a new photo, and in less than a week I had a brand new passport arrive in the mail. The process was actually pleasantly painless for me.

I've heard of people with appointments at 8AM and a passport being delivered to their door by 10AM in emergency situations. Not hard to contact your congressperson to get this done. They love this as it involves almost no effort and is great PR.

You just have book an appointment and get to a consulate. We were going overseas with some friends and a few nights before, one of the people realized their passport was so close to expiring they were likely to be denied entry (many times countries will not let you in if your passport could expire while you're there). They booked an emergency appt. in ATL, drove the 6ish hours, then got their flights changed to leave from ATL. They got it same day if I remember correctly, and flew out that night or the next morning.

Yup, my dad was able to arrange this once.