Malay, Chinese, Indian; These Malaysian Kids Went To Beijing And Came Home With Five Medals

on
0

Malaysia Caps Passport Validity At 10 Years After Extended Passports Caused Airline Check-In Confusion

on

Subscribe to our FREE Newsletter, or Telegram and WhatsApp channels for the latest stories and updates.

Malaysia’s Immigration Department has capped the validity of international passports at exactly 10 years, effective today (12 August), after a number of Malaysians holding passports with extended validity periods were turned away at airline check-in counters overseas.

The directive does not affect standard 10-year passports, which remain valid and available for application.

The issue arose from a specific practice in which remaining months from an expiring passport were carried over and added to a new passport’s validity — resulting in documents that exceeded the standard 10-year period.

Several holders of such passports encountered problems when airlines, applying strict six-month validity rules or misreading the extended validity math, refused to allow them to board.

Legal On Paper, Rejected At The Counter

Immigration Director-General Datuk Zakaria Shaaban said the department had consulted the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) on the matter.

ICAO confirmed that passports exceeding 10 years in validity do not violate international regulations.

However, Zakaria said confusion continued to emerge at check-in counters when airlines applied their own stricter standards.

“When some holders of international passports with validity exceeding 10 years encountered problems checking in with certain airlines abroad, confusion began to emerge,” he said.

The department said the decision to cap validity strictly at 10 years was made to prevent further inconvenience to travellers.

Why Airlines Flagged The Extended Passports

The rejections were not arbitrary.

Airline check-in systems in many countries have a hardcoded maximum of 10 years built into their document verification software — meaning a passport displaying even three extra months of carry-over validity triggers a system error and prevents a boarding pass from being issued.

Regions including the Schengen Zone enforce an additional layer of restriction: under the Schengen Borders Code, a passport must have been issued less than 10 years prior at the point of entry, regardless of the printed expiry date.

Global airline document verification databases such as Timatic automatically flag passports that have been in active circulation for more than a decade.

The extended validity also complicated the standard calculation for the six-month remaining validity rule, creating further confusion at counters.

Airlines face financial penalties from destination countries for boarding passengers with non-compliant documents, giving ground staff a strong incentive to reject any passport that falls outside the standard format.

The result was that a passport ICAO confirmed as technically legal became functionally unusable at check-in counters worldwide.

View on Threads

Share your thoughts with us via TRP’s Facebook, X, Instagram, or Threads.



Malaysia Caps Passport Validity At 10 Years After Extended Passports Caused Airline Check-In Confusion
Entertainment Flash Report

Comments

Post a Comment