US Visa WatchB1 B2 Visa Family Appointment Availability
You've filled out the forms, paid the fee, and logged in to grab a date for your parents — and there's one slot that suits your mother and nothing for your father. Or there are slots, but they're four months apart, and your parents don't fancy travelling to the consulate alone anyway.
That's the moment most families go hunting for a "family appointment." And that's where the confusion starts, because the phrase means something much narrower on the official scheduling site than it does in everyday conversation. So here's how B1/B2 slots actually appear, what a family booking can and can't do for you, and the workaround that gets two parents into the same appointment window when the group route is shut to them.
Why B1/B2 appointment availability changes week to week
Slots don't sit in a warehouse waiting for you. Consulates release interview capacity in batches. How big those batches are depends on how many officers are on the floor that week, how many other visa categories need the same windows, and how much of a backlog the post is trying to clear.
So the calendar you looked at on Monday isn't the calendar you'll see on Friday. Posts add blocks of dates when they work through a batch, and those blocks get eaten within hours or days. Some weeks a post looks wide open. Two weeks later the same post shows nothing for months.
Interview appointment wait times vary by location, season, and visa category. Take that literally. There's no single national queue — there are dozens of separate ones, and yours moves on its own.
Reading the global visa wait times table: location, season, and visa category
The global visa wait times table lists each embassy and consulate with separate numbers for different visa categories. You want the row for your post and the column for B1/B2 visitor visas. Not the student column. Not the immigrant one.
Three things move that number:
- Location. Two posts in the same country can be far apart. In India, one city can run much shorter or longer than another. Same story in the Philippines.
- Season. Summer and the winter holidays are peak. Families travel, students move, and everyone applies at once.
- Visa category. B1/B2 capacity gets carved out separately from work, student and immigrant visas. A short line in one category tells you nothing about yours.
Read the table as a snapshot of pressure, not as a schedule you can plan around.
What a 'family appointment' actually means on the scheduling site
This is the part that trips people up. On the scheduling site, "family" doesn't mean "we want to walk in together." It means something specific: you build one primary applicant profile, attach relatives to it as dependents, and the system books them into the same visit.
That's all it is. A scheduling convenience. It isn't a policy that guarantees two people sit at the same window on the day — whether they're interviewed together or one after the other is the post's call, not yours.
The practical upshot: if you want your parents in the same slot, you're not searching for a special "family appointment." You're bundling them into one booking.
The group appointment rule and the family members it excludes
There's a separate thing called a group appointment request. It's aimed at companies, tour groups and organisations sending several people for the same purpose.
And here's the official line that matters most for families: family members of a group applicant who want to schedule an interview appointment together are not eligible for group appointment requests. Being related doesn't unlock that route.
So the group page tells you what you can't do, then stops. Nothing on it explains what a family should do instead. That's the gap worth knowing about, because there is a path — it just runs through regular scheduling, not the group queue.
One DS-160 per person, one family slot: adding a parent or child as a dependent
Every applicant needs their own DS-160. Two parents means two separate forms with two separate barcodes. You can't merge them into one.
What you can do is tie them together later, at the scheduling stage. A common approach, described in forum threads by people applying from India, goes roughly like this:
- Complete one DS-160 per person and keep each confirmation page with its barcode.
- Create the scheduling profile for one applicant — usually the parent who'll do the booking.
- In the same scheduling session, add the other parent as a family member or dependent, using their own DS-160 barcode.
- Book the appointment, and both applicants land in the same slot.
That last step is the whole trick. The dependent gets pulled into the primary applicant's appointment instead of competing for a slot of their own.
Two things to watch while you're in there. First, the dependent's DS-160 number has to be typed in exactly right — one wrong digit and the booking falls apart. Second, the newer nonimmigrant B1/B2 system includes photo and fingerprint steps at a Visa Appointment Center before the interview. Budget time for that visit. The consulate date isn't the only date in the chain.
Where to check current B1/B2 availability (official portal vs. third-party trackers)
Two places, and they aren't equal.
The official visa appointment service site is the only place where booking actually happens. Fees, profiles, reschedules, the lot. It's the source of truth.
Third-party trackers republish B1/B2 (Regular) availability by location, and many of them refresh often from the official portal. They're useful for one thing: seeing whether slots are dropping right now, before you log in and start clicking. Plenty of people watch a tracker to catch a release, then go book.
What a tracker can't do is hold a slot for you. And it can sit minutes or hours behind the portal. Treat it as a heads-up, never as your booking screen.
No family slots showing? Rescheduling and monitoring options
If nothing works for both parents, don't panic-book and give up. Options, roughly in order of usefulness:
- Book whatever exists now, then use the reschedule function to shift one applicant until the two line up. An early booking is a fallback date in your pocket.
- Check at odd hours. New blocks often appear outside business hours in your time zone, because posts release on their own schedules.
- Check daily, not weekly. Availability moves week to week, and sometimes day to day.
- Message the post. Some scheduling services have a contact or feedback option where you can explain you're booking for a family and ask what's possible. Whether yours offers it, and how it replies, varies — check the official site for your post rather than assuming.
One warning: slots disappear while you're deciding. If you see two that plausibly overlap, take them and tidy up afterwards.
When an expedited appointment makes sense for a family
An expedited appointment isn't a fast lane for people who'd rather travel together. These exist for genuine emergencies, and each applicant has to qualify on their own reasons — not as a package deal.
What counts as an emergency is set by the post, and those rules change. Read your post's page on the official appointment service site before you spend an afternoon on a request you may not qualify for. Filing one isn't a promise of a date, and it doesn't automatically put two parents in the same window.
If your situation is "we'd like to go in June and it's already March," that isn't an expedite. That's planning — which brings us to the last piece.
How much to trust published wait times when planning travel
Published wait time information is an estimate. It can vary from week to week, and it doesn't guarantee that an appointment will be available when you go to book. The table tells you roughly how far out a post is working right now, not what you'll be offered on the day you log in.
So work in this order:
- Check today's wait time for your post.
- Book the earliest realistic appointment for each applicant.
- Only once a date is confirmed, start looking at flights.
- Leave a cushion between the interview and any travel you've already paid for.
Don't buy non-refundable tickets against a wait time. Don't assume your parent's slot will open the moment yours does. And don't take a forum post from someone at a different consulate as your own timeline — their post isn't yours.
Quick answers on B1/B2 family appointments
Are B1 and B2 slots even available? Yes. Slots get released and tracked, and B1/B2 (Regular) availability is published by location from the official portal. But it shifts week to week and depends on location, season and visa category. The official wait time figure is an estimate, not a promise a slot will still be there when you book.
How many days does family visitor visa approval take? There's no fixed number to hand you. Interview appointment wait times vary by location, season and visa category, and the standard advice is to apply early. Go by your own post's current wait, not a national average.
What's the current wait time for a B1/B2 visa? No single answer exists. It's different at every consulate and embassy, it moves with the season, and B1/B2 sits in its own category. Check the global visa wait times table for your post and read it as a rough guide.
What about siblings? There's no separate published number for siblings — the same three factors apply. And if siblings want to interview together, remember that family members of a group applicant who want to schedule an interview appointment together aren't eligible for group appointment requests. Plan on booking each of them individually and lining the dates up through the scheduling system.
Before you book anything, open the official visa appointment service site for your specific post and read its current rules and wait time. Write that number down, and write "estimate" next to it — because that's exactly what it is. Then build your family's plan around the date you actually get, not the date the table made you hope for.