Breaking travel news: Delays in getting new U.S. passports

It’s taking much longer to get a passport, so apply now or risk canceling your foreign trip.

A new posting on the State Department’s website (https://tinyurl.com/zrelt; see full link at the bottom of this article) says it will take up to 10 weeks instead of six weeks to receive a passport after you apply.

Even if you pay $60 extra — that’s in addition to the regular application fees of $97 for a person age 16 or older — plus overnight delivery costs for expedited service, you’ll still wait three to four weeks or “possibly longer” instead of the usual two weeks, the website said.

The reason for the delays is a recent jump in demand, said Ann Barrett, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for passport services.

“We have more people applying for passports than we ever have in our history,” Barrett said in a phone interview.

The State Department expects to issue more than 16 million passports this year, up from more than 12 million in 2006. In November, the last month for which there are complete figures, 1.1 million were issued, up 67% from the previous November.

The last two weeks have been “a perfect storm” for passport processors, Barrett said.

March is usually their busiest month, as families prepare for summer trips and students head into spring break. In addition, a new rule took effect Jan. 23 that requires passports for travel by air between the U.S. and the Caribbean, Canada and Mexico. (Land and sea travel to these areas is not affected.)

The new rule “certainly has accounted for a lot of this increase” in passport applications, Barrett said. To cope, she added, the State Department has put its passport center in Portsmouth, N.H., on 24-hour operation, added a shift at its center in Charleston, S.C., hired more employees and put many on overtime.

In April, it plans to add a facility in Hot Springs, Ark., devoted to printing and producing passports, as opposed to both processing and printing them, as other centers do.

Barrett said the department hoped to ease the backup. In the meantime, she added, “we appreciate everybody’s patience.”

In particular, she asked applicants to avoid calling the toll-free line for the National Passport Information Center, (877) 487-2778, unless they need to travel very soon. The call center last week was swamped with calls, causing delays in answering them. Instead, Barrett urged applicants to track the processing of their passports online. Information on applying for a passport can be found at www.travel.state.gov. (Click on “passports for U.S. citizens.”)

Compounding the problem, some countries will refuse to accept your passport if it is due to expire fewer than six months after you arrive. So be sure to check the date on your passport, and renew if there is any doubt.

For information: www.travel.state.gov/passport/get/processing/processing_1740.html.

jane.engle@latimes.com