How to get a passport in a few hours

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop. Here, we’re serving up travel hacks quicker than Cracker Barrel serves up biscuits. And, what we’re offering is equally delicious.

Here’s what we’ve got in the oven today:

• ✈️ Southwest status match

• 💳 Catch up on the Daily Drop podcast

• 🛂 How to get a passport in a few hours

✈️ Southwest status match

Status matches are dope.

It’s an easy way to get a taste of the elite life with an airline or hotel program without needing to put in any of the work.

One of the best ones out there for Americans is the Southwest Airlines status match program.

Here’s how it works:

When you register for the status match, you get Southwest A-List Status for 90 days.

If you complete three round-trip flights or six one-way flights during those 90 days, your A-List status will extend for another year.

In case you don’t know, A-List status is not a bad thing to have as a frequent Southwest flyer and comes with some pretty tasty benefits:

To be clear, you need to book paid flights to extend your status past the trial period, so award flights will not count.

Still, if you fly even once a month domestically, you could get some EASY elite status.

Alternatively, you could do a mileage run with some dirt-cheap flights for the sole sake of earning status.

But now for the catch… Are you even eligible for this status match?

Well, probably.

All you need is some level of elite status with any other U.S. airline besides Southwest.

That means even if you have the lowest level of status (even with a budget airline like Frontier or Spirit), you can take advantage of this deal.

Overall, this is a great opportunity for frequent (or even semi-frequent) Southwest flyers to get some easy elite status and decent benefits.

💳 Catch up on the Daily Drop podcast

Check out our weekly Daily Drop Podcast, where Mike and Megan give us a deep dive on all things miles and points, credit cards, and more!

And if you’d rather follow along on YouTube, we’ve also got you covered.

🛂 How to get a passport in a few hours

The other day, I was passing through immigration in Indonesia, and the immigration officer said something interesting to me while sifting through the pages of my passport:

Sure enough, I looked through my passport afterward, only to see that I had about three full pages of space left…

And I had a little moment of panic.

My passport doesn’t expire for another seven years, so I had not even been thinking of the fact that it would fill up long before it expired.

As a travel addict, my biggest fear in life is having to sit at home for 6-8 weeks while I wait for a passport to get mailed to me. That and dying alone, of course.

Thankfully, there’s a way to avoid that whole waiting period. In fact, there is a way to get a passport in just a few hours.

It’s something I’ve done before a couple of times, and it’s super easy.

Here’s how:

If you have international travel booked within 14 days, you can get a passport made, in person, in just a few hours.

All you need to do is contact the U.S. Passport Office (you can find the phone number on this website) and make an in-person appointment at one of the dozens of passport offices around the country.

When you show up for your appointment, you present the same documents that you normally do for obtaining or renewing a passport, and you’ll have the new document in your hand in just a few hours.

The best part about doing this is that the cost is no different than if you obtain a passport through normal channels.

For reference, here are the typical costs for adult passports in the U.S. 👇

There are a couple of things to keep in mind here if you want to take this approach:

• You NEED to have flights booked out of the country, including a confirmation number

• When you call, they will ask for proof of your travel, which must take place within two weeks in order to get an appointment

• There is an inherent risk to this: if there are no appointments left, you might end up in a dicey situation…

That last point is an important one… But there is a way to work around this…

Let’s say you have travel booked in about a month.

Rather than wait two weeks until the 14-day window, you could simply book a cheap international flight to Canada or Mexico exactly two weeks out… with free cancellation, of course.

This way, you have a nice extra buffer to get your passport made, and you can simply cancel your placeholder flight after you have the passport in hand.

If anything goes wrong, you still have your original flight that you can use to book another appointment.

I have numerous friends who have done this over the last few months, and I did it myself a few years ago when I renewed my current passport - so I can verify that it’s a great way to get a passport quickly without the hassle of waiting for months.

If you want to read more about this program (and the other ways to get a passport), check out the official website for more details.

That’s all for today, homies.

Before I let you go for the day, I’m curious to hear about your experience with renewing and applying for passports:

See you tomorrow, beautiful people ❤️

13.7563° N, 100.5018° E