Does anyone have any recent experience with this? We only have short-form birth certificate and the helpful answer from UK Immigration is that it "should be" ok. The kid is only travelling with his Mum so they also need a notarised letter from me (as different last names).

Can you not get Baby a Canadian passport before you go?

You need the long form for that... and it takes a few months typically to receive it.

Exactly.

No passport, no travel, won't be allowed on the plane. Simple I'm afraid. We got our long form in the same envelope as the short form, didn't take any longer.

I've never heard of any airline that will let them on without a passport, even for the US now - and even if the UK will let them in, you need to do that bit first. If you find different, please let us know!

^^^^ ----- What he says. You'll need a passport - UK or Canadian, doesn't matter, but you will need one.

Adults have passports.

Does the baby need one?

Yes - everyone travelling across an international border needs one, regardless of age.

The only time I have not had to provide ID for the babe was when we flew domestic and even then I took his passport just in case but was not asked for it.

Of course.

A birth certificate of any type is not a travel document. In fact a mother traveling alone, with the birth certificate of a child and no passport is likely to raise a lot of concerns and cause no end of grief for the travelers.

Highly unlikely any air carrier will let you on an aircraft without all pax having valid passports. If you get refused entry to the UK and sent packing, they have to bring you back, then try and get the fare off of you.

If the child was born in Canada, you can get a passport pretty quickly if you pay the rush fee. Not so sure about UK passports.

You may want to spend some time on the Canadian Passport office web site researching this.

Yup - we flew to Canada from Uk and back again with my daughter and we needed her passport no. to book the tickets (as with all our passport nos.)