Hi all!
Off to Thailand soon and I’m in a bit of a pickle with the onward ticket requirement, as I want to keep my plans open. Came across getonwardticket which sorts this out by offering a temporary ticket. Sounds too good to be true? Anyone from the UK tried this service or something similar? Cheers for any advice!
Thanks
@nomad4non I’ve used it for years. It’s totally legit. It just reserves you a real ticket on a flight and then auto cancels after 24hours. Works perfectly for what you are describing.
Doubt the Thai border will ask for proof but potentially the airlines when you check in so it’s worth having just incase.
A lot of places you do need a return/ onward ticket to show your intent to leave the country. Also Many travel insurance policies state that you MUST hold a return ticket to come home during the insured period, otherwise your policy is invalid just something to be aware of.
We always get a refundable ticket if we are not sure what are plans are. They can be cancelled with no loss of money. Of course it has to be a single not a return. They won’t refund if you use half of it.
You could just book a cheap, refundable flight, then cancel it once you are there. Air Asia are very cheap.
I live in Thailand (I’m a Brit). You are very unlikely to be questioned at Thai immigration but as others have said, depending on the airline, you are very likely to be asked to provide onward or return flight by airline if you don’t have a visa (I’ve always been asked for proof of this at Heathrow) as they can be fined for letting passengers without this board.
Getonwardticket is not a legit ticket and people have had problems with it, although others have used it successfully.
I personally wouldn’t trust it, I’d buy a cheap AirAsia ticket to somewhere like KL which you can get from as little at 40GBP.
Edited to be in line with Forum Guidelines
Really suggest you check the issues people have had with Onward Ticket. Airlines are very well aware of these types of providers and they are often not much cheaper than just purchasing a cheap one way ticket.
Edited to be in line with Forum Guidelines
@BJane never had a problem with them and used them quite a few times. Always good to research though but people only post complaints but never the good stuff when reviewing these sites.
We have used onwardticket and bestonwardticket -both with no problems. Costs about $15-20 pp. The flight is live on the system for about 48 hours so if anyone wants proof at checkin it would show up as an actual booking. We’ve also used the service for visa applications and extensions.
We have never been questioned or challenged.
We always print out the ticket, highlight the date and destination and they rarely give it more than a cursory glance.
A few years ago we regularly used a free service called Fake Flights. These tickets look just as genuine but are completely fake. We stopped using that when airlines started getting stricter.
Have used onward ticket going into NZ without trouble. Have also traveled to Thailand 8 times and was never asked for an onward ticket, but I’m aware that they are within their rights to ask.
Anecdotally, we were asked if we had an onward ticket when entering Japan, and we didn’t because while we were planning to go to South Korea, it hadn’t opened to tourists yet (COVID). They had us sign a declaration that stated we would leave before our visas were up, with our passport details attached and that was that. (This was before we tried using onward ticket)
It is a different company to Getonwardticket.