How Come Sea Airports Dont Enforce The Return Ticket 'rule' ?

[gobbledonk]

Seeing this more often on the forums - check-in staff not allowing people to fly until they have purchased a return ticket (thank God for AirAsia). I'm almost 100% sure (!) I've flown into Thailand without a return ticket (returning from tourist visa runs to Malaysia, for one example) to the country I've just come from - unless they have a record of my flight back to Oz in their system, I cant see how the Customs staff know I have a means of leaving Thailand. I definitely know I've done this in Singapore - presumably a country with heavy penalties for overstayers - as I caught a cab to Johor and crossed into Malaysia on foot. Similarly in Thailand, Farang cross the Cambo and Laos borders all the time to get another stamp in the passport - never once been asked to show my return flight ticket. For a city obsessed with civic order, Singapore would have to be the most easygoing Customs mob I've ever encountered - nowhere near the queue sizes I routinely encounter at Swampy and the bus-station-known-as-LCCT.

 

As I said, the budget carriers have made life a lot easier for us all - I guess I could go through the charade of booking with Thai and chasing a refund, but its easier to just buy something from Jetstar/XAX/Scoot etc. If tickets were transferable, I'd give mine away, but they've even got that sewn up.

[Coss]

I don't think it's an airport or airline rule. I think it's a common immigration rule that airlines coopt to get more sales

[Flashermac]

I've never flown into Thailand with a return ticket, but I have always had a Thai visa stamped in my passport.

[gobbledonk]

Its on the AirAsia Terms and Conditions. The wording is actually 'return ticket or proof of outbound journey', theoretically meaning you could have another flight booked for Thailand from KL, but I know from the last time they hassled me on the Gold Coast (I was returning with a different carrier and Jetstar got snooty till I showed them my flight details with the other guys) that they can still badger you for a return ticket. All manner of elaborate hoaxes suggested on various fora, but I can't be stuffed with having some bozo poring over an internet printout.

 

The good news is that I got KUL-PER for under a hundred AUD with XAX : problem solved, at least for now. I've never read of anyone being hassled at KLIA because they dont have a ticket back to their home country but I guess I'll burn that bridge down when I get to it. (I wonder how many 'longtime tourists' in Thailand are in that boat, even with the crackdown on back-to-back TVs ?). In any case, completely uninterested in buying return tickets to a country I have no intention of ever setting foot in again.

[gobbledonk]

I've never flown into Thailand with a return ticket, but I have always had a Thai visa stamped in my passport.

 

Fair enough, but one of the conditions of getting a tourist visa (at least in Brisbane) is that you are supposed to present your flight itinerary and they photocopy it. With the increase in foreign scammers and vagrants, that might even be enforced at Penang - hope not, as it has been a dream run getting a TV from those wonderful folk at the Consulate.

[baa99]

The airline gets fined (if caught) for those pax that lack the minimum entry requirements. For most countries that means a ticket out of the country before the visa exemption expires or a entry visa. This is why the airline checks the docs.

[think_too_mut]

The airline that brought you into the country is responsible to take you back if entry is denied.

Bigger airlines may have 100s a day.

Any clerk at the counter can get into trouble if the passenger checked through him is loaded on the plane back at the airline's expense.

 

Airlines have neither right nor power to police people's movement and schedules, but have the right to protect their business interest.

 

Wife and daughter go to Japan on 1-way ticket (2 x 1 way is half the price of return ticket, incredible!).

5 years Japan visa vouching and no questions asked.

Really, how would someone on 5 years visa buy a return ticket that is valid longer than 1 year? Impossible.

[Pescator]

,,

[TroyinEwa/Perv]

Almost every country has this policy, rule, law whatever you wanna call it. Unless you have proof of residence in the country you are going (if you are not a passport holder of that country) it is "required" you have an onward ticket within the time limits of your form of entry.

 

The agent will most likely not get in trouble and there are not 100's per day as wrongly stated by a previous poster. The agent has every right and actually a duty to deny a passenger that does not have this document, boarding on the aircraft in the origin city. I have personally done this many times unless the passenger bought a ticket leaving the country of destination.

[gobbledonk]

Almost every country has this policy, rule, law whatever you wanna call it. Unless you have proof of residence in the country you are going (if you are not a passport holder of that country) it is "required" you have an onward ticket within the time limits of your form of entry.

 

The agent will most likely not get in trouble and there are not 100's per day as wrongly stated by a previous poster. The agent has every right and actually a duty to deny a passenger that does not have this document, boarding on the aircraft in the origin city. I have personally done this many times unless the passenger bought a ticket leaving the country of destination.

 

OK - we've established that its a fair and reasonable policy for anyone without a (very) longstay visa - its the enforcement in certain ASEAN countries that seems to be the missing piece of the puzzle. Granted, I'm cheap, and it may simply be that the budget carriers have too many cattle passengers to mess around at check-in. Paying <100AUD for that KUL-PER ticket today, I remember thinking 'This is what I paid to fly Nok from Udon back to Swampy in 2008 !' - sure, the price of a seat on that plane will go up each month between now and next June, but it's pretty obvious that the less time XAX staff spend on each passenger, the more quickly they can process the sheer numbers they need to turn a profit.