If you are lucky enough to get an appointment with a US Passport Office within 72 hours of your departure, do you get the passport that same day or do you have to wait around to pick it up in a day or so? This is for the urgent travel requirement, NOT life-and-death emergency travel.

Thanks in advance for any information!

I've never done it but know a couple of people who have and yes, it is possible to get a passport in one day. A friend was leaving for Japan, and just 'knew' her passport was still good. The night before her trip -- "OMG, it lapsed 2 months ago!!". She made an appointment in San Francisco and had her passport in just over 4 hours. She had to re-book her flight for one day later (when she was supposed to be on the plane she was sitting in the SF passport office )

With better planning -- like making the appointment a couple of days earlier - duh - she wouldn't have lost one day of her vacation.

Thank you for the info! My partner is trying to go on a kind of last minute business trip. We knew his passport had been misplaced, but figured there was no hurry to get it. Then this trip came up and it was too late to even do expedited service, so we are scrambling and trying to do the last minute thing. He may have to travel to get to a passport office that has an appointment available, and we were just wondering if he needed to stay overnight. Lesson definitely learned here: don't wait, even if you have no immediate plans to travel!

When our passports were stolen in Chile, we went to the US Embassy in Santiago at 9am snd had our new ones by 3pm.