MDAC for a Family or Group: Surprising 2026 Rule Explained

Can one MDAC cover a whole family or travel group?

No. Each individual traveler must have their own MDAC, regardless of whether they are part of a family or group. There is no single MDAC for a family or group, since every person needs their own submission. However, our simplified group form allows you to submit up to 5 travelers in a single application session, saving time and effort. Each traveler will still receive a separate MDAC.

Why there’s no single MDAC for a family or group

The MDAC is built around individual passport details, arrival information, and personal data for exactly one traveler at a time. Immigration checks each person separately at the counter, scanning one passport and one QR code per traveler, which is why the system has no option to bundle multiple people under a single record, even when everyone is flying together, staying at the same address, and traveling for the exact same reason.

This applies no matter how young the traveler is. Infants and children need their own MDAC just like adults do, filled out with their own passport details rather than folded into a parent’s application. A family of four, two adults and two kids, still means four separate MDACs, even though they’re all part of one trip.

How our group form makes filing an MDAC for a family or group easier

Filling out four, five, or more individual government forms back to back is exactly the kind of repetitive task that eats up time right when you’re also dealing with packing and last minute travel prep. Our simplified group form lets you enter details for up to 5 travelers in a single session, so you’re not logging in and starting over from scratch for every member of your family or group. Behind the scenes, each traveler still gets their own properly filed MDAC, matching their own passport and travel details, exactly as required.

What happens if your group has more than 5 travelers

If you’re traveling with a larger group, a bigger family, an extended family trip, or a group of colleagues, you’re not limited to submitting in batches of exactly 5. Just reach out to us and we’ll take care of the rest of the group as well, keeping every traveler’s MDAC organized so nothing gets mixed up between who’s who.

Why changes get complicated when a family files directly with the government

If your family or group files directly on the official government site instead of through us, making a change afterward gets a lot harder, and it gets harder for every single traveler in the group, not just one. Each MDAC on the official system is tied to its own 8 character code made up of a mix of numbers and upper and lower case letters, sent to the email used for that specific submission. If a flight changes, an address changes, or anything else needs correcting, that code is the only way in, and with several family members each holding their own code, keeping track of which one belongs to which person becomes its own headache. Lose or misplace even one of those codes, or get an email wrong for just one traveler in the group, and that person’s entire MDAC has to be filed again from the beginning, separately from everyone else’s.

Handling an MDAC for a family or group this way, on your own, with a different code for every single traveler, is exactly the kind of task that turns into far more hassle than it looks like at first.

Our fee for handling all of this is low, and honestly, it’s worth it once you consider what it’s actually saving you: the time of filling out multiple forms one by one, the effort of tracking separate codes and emails for every traveler, and the worry of wondering whether a mismatched detail is going to cause a problem for someone in your group right at the airport.