One way ticket to thailand strategy?

[spoon]

I think its common knowledge now that many airlines has a policy that you need to book a return ticket or out of country next destination ticket before they allow you to board the plane. Main reason is if you are denied entry to the destination country, airline have to fly you back home. I have done some research that some of the strategy if you dont have a set date of return or dont want to buy return ticket too early as they might be too expensive at the time of purchase, u can do few of the following.

 

1. Buy a fully refundable return ticket and cancel the ticket once you are in thailand. Some caveat is that your money will be held by airlines for a while before you get back the refund.

2. Buy the cheapest flight ticket out of the thailand, date/time isnt important as you wont be using this ticket anyway. Obvious caveat is you lose the money u spent.

3. Buy a land transportation ticket out of thailand, might be cheaper than cheapest flight ticket. However some airlines might not accept this, since if u were denied entry at airport, land transportation is out of question anyway.

4. Use one of the services online where they provide you with a valid ticket for a fee that is only valid for 1-2 days. However i dont know how legit is this?

 

Anyone have any other strategy or have use any strategy above successfully? (Especially #3 and #4)

 

My reason to buy one way ticket is because i am not sure if i want to spend my time in bkk or head out to phuket/chiang mai etc and if i do head out, flying back home from those places is way better/cheaper.

[hank75]

I have never actually been questioned on my return flight in Thailand. I have bought my exit flights (or redeemed with miles) sometimes even the day before my departure. Sure, Thai immigration will ask how long you stay, but they don’t need to see a return ticket. Unlike the Philippines where upon checking in, if the airline desk does not observe a return flight, they ask you to prove you have an outbound booked with another airline before they will issue your ticket.

[speedoo1]

I agree with the previous poster. Highly unlikely you will be asked to show a return ticket by thai immigration or airline staff (at check-in). No need to do any of your 1-4 strategies above.

[spoon]

Mind sharing what airlines and where are you guys departing from? I know for a fact that airasia check-in have from time to time do check return ticket but it wasnt consistent, sometimes they do sometimes they dont. I will be flying from kuala lumpur if that matters

[GWMinUS]

My experience in traveling to Thailand or the Philippines is the Airline in the USA REQUIRES a return ticket.

Either back to the USA or on to another destination.

And this is for boarding in Los Angeles flying to Asia...

[PeterRS]

Highly unlikely you will be asked to show a return ticket by thai immigration or airline staff (at check-in). No need to do any of your 1-4 strategies above.

 

It is not only Thailand immigration you have to worry about. All airlines know the rules and some implement them. I have twice been asked at my departure airport for a copy of my ticket out of the country. After making a bit of a fuss and showing the agent the number of previous Thai short stay entry/exit stamps, I was told airlines run the risk of a passenger being denied entry to Thailand. Then they have to fly the passenger back and pay a fine to the Thai authorities. 

 

The second time this happened was in Sydney on the return portion of a biz class ticket. I did in fact have a ticket out of Bangkok but the flight was a couple of weeks later and I had not taken the ticket with me. The local airline manager said he had to see the ticket before he would allow me to board. He finally permitted check-in to be completed only after I had signed a waiver and given him a credit card imprint.

[GWMinUS]

So it seems no one has a good Strategy??

I was always told to buy an Open Ticket for the return trip.

But so expensive!!

[spoon]

I have contacted one airline that i usuallg used and they responded that it is a requirement to have the inbound and outbound document at the time of check in. I am also curious if there are better ways other than listed above. If buying open or fully refunded ticket is the best option, any suggestion of company/airline that has no hassle cancelation/refund policy?

[Guest]

Buying a refundable ticket out of Thailand is the easiest  but at least in the USA , all you need to do is present a copy of a reservation out of the country .  A few times  I did just that . Of course it was a reservation made and cancelled within 24 hours . The person at check in really has no way to check if the reservation is still active and even if they did 99.9% of the time would never check further .

 

I have never been asked for copy of flights out of Thailand when going through Customs in BKK. However the  same as above would work since Thai Immigration has no ability or reason to check if your outward reservation is active.

 

For many years I planned my visits months in advance and since RT tickets from the USA were always more expensive then RT's from BKK I was frequently asked for BKK departure reservations from USA check in. In this case I always had a real reservation which started in BKK.

[pong]

This is much more a thing of the BOARDING country. Esp. the downfooters in OZ are famous for this. Also its often tit-for-tat, like in most reciprocal international things. Thus what happens at LAX has very little to tell what may happen at MEL.The official rules are in the tiMATIC, to which all airlines etc have access via complex and expensive subscriptions. Sites like wiki-travel etc are often out of date or miss the detailed points.

Island nations-notably pacific, PH etc, are also much more inclined to enforce this rule. Some countries state this explicit (like PH) for the short-term visa-free entries.

Having to deal with many of these entry-rules in former job, I never ever have heard of THai immi refusing entry on the grounds of just this for EUR's.

@spoon- you are malay, thus ASEAN-and can always say you come back on the kereta-api, lah!

[ChristianPFC]

Most of my flights to Thailand are one-way with a tourist visa, so no problem here.

 

I was asked for ticket out of Thailand when I boarded China Airlines in Taipei to Bangkok. I didn't have, and I didn't have a visa either, so all I could do was to buy a fully refundable flight out of Thailand. To make things easier, I did with the same airline, a flight Bangkok to Taipei which cost me about 30,000 THB. The refunding worked, but there were losses (e.g. 1.75% by my German bank whose credit card I used to pay for the flight), that amounted to about 3,000 THB.

 

The local airline manager said he had to see the ticket before he would allow me to board. He finally permitted check-in to be completed only after I had signed a waiver and given him a credit card imprint.

 

That would have been a cheaper option! Is the waiver instead of ticket at discretion of the airline or staff?

 

Addendum: I recently found that when you pay flights with Nok Air at 7-Eleven, there is a time frame of 24 hours during which the payment has to be made. But the document issued to make payment is not a reservation.

[spoon]

@spoon- you are malay, thus ASEAN-and can always say you come back on the kereta-api, lah!

What i say isnt relevant, they want documents meaning i need to buy tickets plane or train, thus need to have firm plans before travel.

[ChristianPFC]

From airline to embassy requirements to enter Thailand. While the Thai embassy in Berlin accepts bus or train tickets as proof of leaving Thailand, train tickets can only be bought 60 days in advance which is too short for my purposes. Anyway, a train ticket to Aranyaprathet or Nong Khai implies leaving Thailand by the nearby border crossing, but is still in Thailand. A bus ticket to Siem Reap would work.

 

But you never know if the airline staff or immigration officer would accept a bus ticket as proof of leaving Thailand. With a flight, you are on the safe side.

[ceejay]

Christian has already touched on the simplest answer which is to get a tourist visa before you depart. Thai immigration only require a flight out if you are entering visa exempt (getting a 30 day stamp on arrival). A visa, any visa, and you do not need the flight out. The airlines know this.

I don't know about other airports or airlines, but you will get checked at Heathrow using BA. Their automatic check in will direct you to a manned check in station if you have a 1-way ticket. This is specifically to check you for a visa.

(Incidentally, the last time I did this it was a miracle the woman on the check in station had found her way out of the front door that morning, she was that stupid. I quote what she said to me "You need a visa for Thailand. This says Chiang Mai Immigration")

[spoon]

I didnt even know those who gets visa exempt can also apply for visa. That will cost around usd30 right? Thats another money in the drain, refundable ticket might be better in that respect i guess, only if payment doesnt involve exchange rates and bank fees.

[ceejay]

Oops! I have checked to find out the price and it seems things have changed. You now need a ticket out to apply for a tourist visa (in both the UK and the USA so - I was wrong. It doesn't solve the issue at all.

[ChristianPFC]

We are dealing with three different entities:

 

Embassy The Thai embassy in Berlin requires a flight out of Thailand to issue a tourist visa. I always had a flight within 60 days of arrival, and nowadays don't to extension any more anyway.

 

It remains a mystery to me why embassy asks for a flight out of Thailand, even for flight to Thailand. The starting date of the visa is not related to these dates. At least the flight out of Thailand, I would like to have more freedom when and where to go, instead of having date and place 3 months in advance. And for flight to Thailand, which has to be shortly after visa starts, but I would rather have the visa first and book the flight after.

 

E-visa for Myanmar does not require flight in or out, only port of entry has to be specified. And technically you can only enter Myanmar if you have a ticket out, but I have done four times without and never been asked.

 

Airline In the encounter quoted above (China airlines from Taipei to Bangkok), I had no visa, but flight out of Thailand within 60 days and a printout of website about 30 days extension, and could show all my previous visa free entries and extensions, but airline staff insisted on a flight out of Thailand within 30 days.

 

Immigration These are whose business it is, but I have never been asked for flight out of Thailand by immigration!

[Guest bidreamer]

Yes, it is mostly the airline that might be interested in your onward ticket, but once or twice I have been asked at immigration "do you have ticket home?" They did not actually want to see it, though. But normally I get a return ticket with changeable dates anyway, it's not necessarily much more expensive for some airlines. In the end, will probably save money (even a lot of) over two cheapest one-way tickets, especially when the ticket back is bought last minute.

 

But the tip that I discovered is that online portals usually offer only 2-3 ticket classes, but actually there are many more. Among these few, the price increase for the flexible one can indeed be a lot. Ihave called the airline and asked for the lowest ticket class that permits changes. Can come back with a very reasonable price, that was not available online. In my case, fortunately I can call the number for gold members, they try to be a little more helpful there and maybe would not go into the trouble of looking through various price categories in the regular help line (assuming you are lucky enough to actually get in touuch with a human, of course)

[paborn]

I was, for many years, a T&E consultant and while I never worked for an airline I studied at the Lufthansa fare international rate school and know my way around the airline tariffs.

 

It's not so much that the fares aren't available but they are hard to tie down. You see, if I wanted to find the lowest fare I would, using an airline or agent computer, pull up the tariff tables and read the fare rules. To be real short about it there might be a very low fare that is to leave on tuesday and come back on a Wednesday staying over at least one Saturday.

 

The booking sites have to translate this into a simple point and click, you come back on a Monday even if away three weeks and you break the above fare example. So, it won't come up. That is the value that I see in google flights with the calendar as a starting point. As complicated as airfares are and believe me they are it is amazing what the sites are able to do. Perhaps, we start with a call to an airline and for information and never book with them, saving that fee.

[EricV]

Here are three ways to do this:

1. Buy a refundable ticket for return flight & cancel if your plans change.

2. Buy the cheapest one-way ticket you can find. Use SkyScanner - it'll let you search for flights to "Everywhere" from BKK/DMK within a month, so you can get a ticket for a few bucks and just toss it...

[sglad]

Mind sharing what airlines and where are you guys departing from? I know for a fact that airasia check-in have from time to time do check return ticket but it wasnt consistent, sometimes they do sometimes they dont. I will be flying from kuala lumpur if that matters

 

Isn't checking-in fully automated and DIY at KLIA2 now so who's going to check whether you have a return ticket or not? I've flown Air Asia from KLIA2 twice this past year; once was coming home to Singapore so I guess that doesn't count but the other time was an onward flight to Thailand.  I had to do everything myself, from printing my own boarding pass and baggage tags to weighing and checking-in my luggage.  When they say budget, they really mean budget. It was quite chaotic and thank god I was at the airport early.  There were Air Asia staff milling around to provide assistance to those who needed it.  I don't recall being asked for an onward ticket out of Thailand by any of the machines that I used and certainly not by the overwhelmed Air Asia staff.