Question: I read in Sunday’s Before You Go column about how journalist James Lileks had trouble with an airline regarding his passport having only four months left until expiration. He was traveling to Romania and had to press the gate agent to confirm that country had a “six month until expiration” limitation (it did not). My son-in-law, traveling to South Africa, was denied boarding because he did not have the required number of blank pages in his passport visa section. Do passport requirements for traveling to foreign countries vary by country? … Do airlines have the authority to deny boarding for perceived passport limitation violations?
Answer: Yes, passport entry requirements vary by country, and airlines may refuse to board passengers for failing to meet the intended destination’s requirements, according to the U.S. State Department, which advises Americans to have at least six months’ validity remaining on their passports whenever embarking on an international trip.
The department’s Office of American Citizens Services and Crisis Management administers the Consular Information Program, which provides vital information for travelers about every country in the world, including specific entry, exit and visa requirements. The program shares information in several ways, including online; find it at 808ne.ws/passportrules.
Checking the site, we learned that South Africa requires foreign travelers to have consecutive empty pages in their passports upon every arrival to the country, and the passport must be valid for at least 30 days beyond the entry date. “You will be denied entry and forced to return to your point of origin if you do not have two blank visa pages,” it states.
Elsewhere on the State Department website, the Bureau of Consular Affairs explains that numerous countries require passports to be valid for at least six months beyond the date of entry, and that some require two to four consecutive blank visa/stamp pages in the passport. Some airlines refuse to board passengers whose documents don’t meet the destination country’s requirements, it says.
Individual airlines make clear in their “contract of carriage” that the onus is on the passenger to know and follow the rules. United Airlines, for example, states in “Rule 19, Travel Documents” that each passenger “desiring transportation across any international boundary” is responsible for presenting all necessary documents. The airline “reserves the right to deny boarding to any passenger whose necessary travel documents … do not comply with laws of the specific country the passenger is departing from, transiting through, or traveling to.”
As Lileks noted in his column (808ne.ws/2bWmuPx), gate agents sometimes make mistakes, and polite persistence can help resolve the problem. The best bet, though, is to check the State Department site well ahead of time to ensure that you’ll be in compliance come takeoff.
Q: It seems like there are quite a few more electric cars on the roads. Does anyone keep track of this?
A: Yes. The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism issues data every month about energy that includes the number and type of registered vehicles in the state. As of July there were 4,536 electric passenger vehicles registered in Hawaii, up 26 percent from July 2015 and more than 12 times the 357 registered as of July 2011.
This number does not include hybrid passenger vehicles, which have their own category. The number of hybrids as of July rose to 21,820, up 6.5 percent from July 2015 and more than double the 10,085 registered as of July 2011.
Gasoline passenger vehicles dwarf both categories, though, totaling 998,721 vehicles in July, or nearly 97 percent of all passenger vehicles, according to DBEDT.
Mahalo
Many thanks to that special someone who turned in my Visa credit card at the Mililani Post Office a couple of weeks ago. I must have dropped it while mailing my packages at the self-mail kiosk. It’s reassuring that there are honest people out there! After experiencing identify theft myself, you kinda lose faith. — Aloha, JW
Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu 96813; call 529-4773; fax 529-4750; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.
