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Wednesday, February 07, 2007

What visas do I need?

With the complex and ever changing visa requirements it is important to keep informed of what you need. A lot of my visas are done either on arrival (great time saver when travelling to those countries that offer it), or at the last minute when I have a small window of not using my passport to get the next lot of visas.

While I usually use the services of a specialist travel visa company, I still find it helpful to have some idea in advance of the visas I'll need. No point in sending away to get a visa (possibly to a third country if no official representation here) if I can get one on arrival instead.

Delta Airlines has a link to the IATA visa database maintained by Timatic. It is very easy to use.

Some other airlines also have links to the database, but for some reason are restricted to less countries and/or nationalities. The Delta link works for everyone and everywhere as far as I can tell.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

The database is not correct in all cases. Just checked it for an upcoming trip to Thailand. The database says: "Passport (must be valid at least 30 days and in good condition) required", while Lufthansa, the german "Auswärtiges Amt", the Thai embassy and many other websites require a 6-month valid passport.

The Global Traveller said...

Thanks johannes. That is good to know (although annoying).

I must admit to not paying a lot of attention to remaining passport validity because my passport usually gets full so far before it expires that these restrictions have no effect for me.

When asked by others I say assume you need at least 6 months remaining validity on your planned return date. It may be conservative sometimes but I haven't seen any countries require longer validity than this.

Michael Dietrich said...

This database is also available on the new Star Alliance website; there is a direct link from the front page to "Visa & Health". Easier to remember than the Delta page.

Direct Link:
http://www.staralliance.com/en/travellers/tools_services/health_visa_form.html

SmilingBoy.