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We are traveling from the US to Spain in April and we want to reserve some train tickets (the high-speed train from Madrid to Barcelona -- not crossing any borders). The online site, loco2.com, requires passport numbers for the tickets. However, my son's passport is being renewed, and we won't have his new number for another couple of weeks. If we book the ticket under his previous passport number, are there likely to be any issues?

(Edit: Going through the site again suggests that it was a misunderstanding, and they do not in fact require passports for tickets.)

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    Seems odd that they're asking for passport numbers. It would be entirley possible to want to use these trains without having a passport. What website are you using?
    – CMaster
    Mar 3, 2016 at 13:19
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    loco2.com; updated the question again
    – iayork
    Mar 3, 2016 at 13:53
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    @iayork Which exact train are you trying to book and where exactly are you asked for passport details? Without completing the checkout process (entering payment data), I am not asked for passport or id card details when I try to book arbitrary trains from Madrid to Barcelona on loco2.com.
    – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo
    Mar 3, 2016 at 14:38
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    @ioyork Does the page actually requires passport numbers for all travelers, or just for one traveler per ticket? In that case, you could try to book all travelers onto one ticket. Also, for an intra-spain train, you could check what the conditions are for booking a ticket on the RENFE website, which is the company operating the train.
    – DCTLib
    Mar 3, 2016 at 14:51
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    I just went through the process and I'm not seeing the request for passports either ... either it's changed (unlikely) or my wife misread something (impossible) or ... umm I'll delete this question if I don't figure out where the problem was, but thanks to everyone who has comments
    – iayork
    Mar 3, 2016 at 14:58

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I'm fairly confident that it will be fine.

I searched for RENFE ticket PDFs that I still have on my computer, and none of them seem to have my passport number on them, or even my name. I don't recall ever having my ID checked when boarding an AVE, they just scan your ticket. The passport / ID card number seems to be optional on the RENFE site.

As others have commented, in most countries you will get your old passport back, so you can bring both along to be absolutely certain.

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  • In the United States, you get a whole new booklet, and a new number. Perhaps this is because we have no national ID registry.
    – Andrew Lazarus
    Mar 3, 2016 at 23:29
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    @AndrewLazarus Sure, in the UK renewing the passport also gives you a new booklet and a new number. But they return the old passport to you along with the new one (not least because the old one might have valid visas in it). Assuming the US is the same, you can still show them the old passport, especially since it's just being used as ID, not as travel authorization.
    – David Richerby
    Mar 4, 2016 at 2:48
  • @AndrewLazarus that's actually standard procedure regardless of the existence of a national ID registry. The passport number identifies the document, and when the document is replaced the new one has a new passport number. True renewals of passports, meaning extending the validity of the document, are increasingly rare; people commonly use "renew" to mean "replace," as in the US. Countries that have national identification numbers may include them with the passport data, but this does not replace the document number, which is subject to the ICAO specification (maximum 9 characters, etc.).
    – phoog
    Mar 26 at 12:36

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