The U.S. State Department is getting hundreds of thousands of passport applications a week.
So, if you’re thinking of taking a trip abroad, make sure to get or renew your passport early.
Because you don’t want to be as stressed as Christine Burke was leading up to a special cruise.
“Our trip is next Saturday, a week, and I still don’t have my passport and we’re so excited and looking forward to this trip,” said the West Hartford mom.
Get Connecticut local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Connecticut newsletters.
Burke’s twin girls just graduated high school and she had been counting down the days to bond with them abroad before the 18-year-olds left for college.
“Finally, we got all the pictures right, the passports done and we’re waiting, we’re waiting. Everybody got their passports back except me,” she said.
Burke says she and her daughters started the passport renewal process in mid-May.
Local
But just a couple of weeks before they were to embark on their end-of-August journey, Burke got a letter that her passport picture, which she had taken at the same place as her girls, wasn’t good.
So, she rushed to get another one.
“I’m on pins and needles here just waiting,” she said to NBC CT Responds Consumer Reporter Caitlin Burchill, as she waited to see if her passport would arrive in time before her trip.
NBC CT Responds reached out to the State Department and Connecticut’s U.S. senator's offices too.
Burke got her passport with three days to spare.
She sent NBC CT Responds a video while on the deck of the cruise saying, “Thank you so much for everybody’s help. NBC News was so helpful, so was Chris Murphy’s office.”
Burke says she was having the time of her life with her favorite ladies, “This is the best vacation ever. Thank you.”
But looking back, she would do one thing differently.
“It seemed like all of a sudden everyone got their passport done at once, like I definitely would have gone a couple months earlier if I absolutely knew this was going to happen,” she said.
The U.S. Department of State’s Office of Passport Services tells NBC Responds that right now routine service currently takes about 10 to 13 weeks and expedited service takes seven to nine weeks.
“Those times are higher than they were before COVID and we’re working our hardest to meet demand through tens of thousands of hours of overtime and hiring efforts,” said Andres Rodriguez, the Office of Passport Services’ community relations officer.
He says the delays are coming from the demand.
“Some weeks we’re getting as many as 400,000 applications per week. During some months, during the winter, that was around 500,000. It’s a lot of work,” he said.
NBC Responds teams around the country have received dozens of passport complaints in the past two years -- 258 to be exact from Jan. 14, 2021, through Aug. 14, 2023.
Senator Blumenthal’s office has received around 400 requests for passport help since March, which his office says is a huge increase from previous years.
Senator Murphy’s office has already heard almost two times the passport requests this year than last year, and it’s only August (621 requests so far this year compared to 338 for all of 2022).
The Office of Passport Services says its goal is to reduce processing time by the end of the year and modernize in the long run since the current paper-based application process is intensive.
“Each application requires a passport adjudicator to thoroughly vet, review, approve, deny, or request more information from any particular applicant,” explained Rodriquez.
In the meantime, the State Department encourages people to not book a trip abroad without having an up-to-date passport in hand.
“All I can say to everybody is just plan ahead of time. If your passport even looks close to needing a new one, then just go for it,” said Burke.
