If only everyone knew as much about passports as you now do!
We’ve reviewed the news and found plenty of stories of truly unbelievable passport mistakes. Read on for tales of passport mistakes made by governments, airlines, and even travel experts!
Government Passport Mistakes
The vast majority of times, when new passports are issued, they are printed correctly. However, it does happen every once in a while that a mistake is made! We have seen passports issued with errors like misspelled names, incorrect expiration dates, and the wrong state of birth listed. If your passport is ever issued with an error, you can have it corrected free of charge within the first year after it is issued. But don’t delay! If you want to correct a mistake on a US passport that was issued more than one year ago, you’ll have to apply for a passport renewal instead and pay the full government fee.
Most passport mistakes are pretty mundane, but these printing mistakes were major enough to make the news!
Toddler’s Passport Issued With The Wrong Photo
A British mother took her story to the news after UK Passport Agency officials “laughed off” her concern that her son’s passport was issued with another boy’s photo on it. Lewis Killingworth, age 2, had been issued a passport with the photo of a different boy, who appeared to be at least two or three years older than Lewis!
After his mother made further complaints, little Lewis was issued a corrected passport so that he could join his family on a vacation to Spain.
Man’s Passport Photo Looks Like Hitler
Our next tale of passport printing errors also comes from the United Kingdom. British citizen Stuart Boyd applied for a new passport so he could take a trip to celebrate his 50th birthday. When his new passport was delivered, he was appalled to discover that the scanned photo printed on to his passport made him look like Hitler! Boyd is clean-shaven, but a printing error gave him what appeared to be a Hitler-like mustache.
Boyd contacted the Passport Office and was able to have a new passport issued free of charge… but only after he’d posted his passport photo to Facebook, and had his story picked up by the media!
