Important visa information that everyone needs to know to get a transfer

"I was not allowed to change without a visa! Urgently repost !!!!! Everyone can get into such a situation! With this airline I will no longer fly and will not advise you! What am I supposed to stay at the airport like in the movie" Terminal "? Be sure to read this post and share it with your friends! "

These words usually start the emotional messages of passengers who are stuck without the necessary documents at the airport, with a call to boycott the airline, with tags of officials, photos of sleeping children on airport trolleys, etc. And thoughtless reposts rushed through the network ... But this is a situation that is NOT very easy to get into, because it is enough to know the basic rules of transit. registration of necessary documents, visas, vaccination certificates in advance of departure.

How to check if I need a visa if I am in transit?

Timatic is also available online. for you and me at any given time, here are a few sources with different user interfaces:

Timatic 2.0: - //skyteam.traveldoc.aero
Timatic 2.0: - //www.iatatravelcentre.co...
Timatic 1.0: - //emirates.com/english/be...
Timatic 1.0: - //gulfair.com/before-you-...

Important technical clarification:

Access to the Timatik database is paid for airlines (500 euros per year, then about 0.12 euros for each request), but many of them kindly provide the opportunity to check the requirements for everyone. In 2017, Timatik was upgraded to version 2.0, in which the interface and format for issuing the result changed, and now the request is more tailored specifically for the needs of the airline - if in the first version it was enough to enter the departure point, destination and country of transit to get complete information, now it is also required to indicate the date and time of connection, the opportunity to get comprehensive information on this route as a whole from the core Timatic database has disappeared. Fortunately, there are still airlines that provide access to the 1.0 base, so there is still the opportunity to see detailed information.

What is not a source of information for a registration agent?

"I'm not leaving the transit airport, why do I need a visa?"

ALWAYS check the rules before traveling with a dock!

For example, to travel Frankfurt-Toronto-New York, you need a Canadian visa, for the Moscow-London-Dublin route you need a British visa. This may seem counterintuitive to you, but Toronto-New York and London-Dublin flights are organized as domestic flights at their respective airports. Even for the Dubai-Sydney-Auckland route, where in Australia the plane only stops for refueling and you do not leave it, you need an Australian visa! There are a lot of such examples.

Be very careful if you fly to the overseas territories of different states (for example, Saint-Martin, Curacao, Reunion, Gibraltar, etc.), where visa rules can differ quite significantly from the main country.

What is visa-free transit?

Some countries and airports have their own individual visa-free transit rules, but they are strictly individual, have different durations (for example, from 24 hours in the UK to 144 hours in China), different route requirements depending on your passport, presence / absence of visas in it (for example, the rules for visa-free transit in the UK differ depending on whether you have a "clean" passport or a residence permit in the EU).

Moreover, always correctly follow the transit rules as such, this is a flight from point A to C through B. For example, upon arrival in Singapore to obtain the right of visa-free transit for 96 hours you need to have a ticket to a third country, and not a return ticket to the country from which you just flew in. It seems to be obvious, but among my close friends there were cases of having a Bangkok-Singapore-Bangkok ticket and a desire to get to Singapore at the border already upon arrival, this is a mistake that costs time, money and missed opportunities.

Medical requirements

To travel to some countries, when returning from some countries, you also need to have a certificate of vaccination. This information is also in Timatik.

Can Timatic be wrong?

Timatic is updated centrally by IATA specialists; airlines do not update data on their own. For example, on January 1, Timatik Dubai was still a visa country for Ukrainian citizens, which could lead to a refusal to board passengers traveling, for example, from EU cities to Dubai, because the agents there are not up to date. Within 1-2 days the information was updated.