WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – Just in time for your 2024 travel plans, the State Department says passport processing times are back to normal. This comes after months of stressful delays that ruined international trips for tons of summer travelers.
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A surge of post-pandemic travel led to record requests for passports this year and the U.S. State Department struggled to handle the demand.
Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) says his office was overwhelmed with complaints from frustrated travelers whose plans were snarled by costly passport delays. Some wait times for passports were as long as three months.
“It was chaos,” Warner said.
But now, the State Department says it’s back on schedule and routing passport processing takes just 6 to 8 weeks.
“The State Department has really worked diligently. They worked a lot of overtime hours to catch up. They processed over like 24 million passports,” …