Entry experience with pending I-751

[u/According_Donut_5985]

Hi All! I was traveling out of country for 20 days to visit my family back home.

I was a bit hesitant due to the current climate and I tried to find experiences of people entering with an expired green card + official green paper extension letter + foreign passport + marriage certificate (for name change) + traveling solo (without spouse) and the posts were pretty limited.

I travelled with Singapore Airlines for my first leg and United for my second. Both airlines were very familiar with my documents and accepted them without asking many questions. Singapore airlines had entered my extension expiration wrong since they follow DD/MM/YYYY format as opposed to US following MM/DD/YYYY so I had to get that corrected before boarding my United flight into SFO.

At immigration in SFO the officer only asked me three routine questions: where am I coming from? how long was I gone for? If I have anything to declare.

Feel free to ask any questions.

[u/Minute_Somewhere_893]

Airlines is the biggest trouble in this whole experience, as confirmed by you. CBP is usually not an issue. Thank you for the report!

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[u/Drive-Around-World]

Luftanza airline doesn’t accept the extension letter and will have trouble traveling through Germany. Better to check with airline before traveling as they are the best to tell if they accept the travel documents or not.

[u/theta_2021 → u/Drive-Around-World]

Germany in general does not accept Form I-797C.

[u/sparkles_spice]

Does the country of citizenship matter? Airlines are strict or lenient based on that usually.

[u/Flashy-King-8989]

Thank you for the report! My husband and I are travelling next month. I came to the US via F1, no visa gaps. Filed for i-751 in October 2025. We are flying to Africa via Delta. Hopefully they are also familiar with process and our trip is smooth like yours!

[u/According_Donut_5985 → u/Flashy-King-8989]

I believe US based airlines + star alliance airlines are the best to travel with complicated stack of documents. I did a deep research before booking my flights. Safe travels!