Philippines: New Requirement when Flying Back into the Country

American Airlines now require an onward reservation when returning to the Philippines even if you have documents supporting the fact your boat is berthed there.

Published 11 years ago, updated 5 years ago

Posted 9 May, 2013

Returning to the Philippines from the United States had a new twist recently. I was using the return portion of my Manila-San Francisco-Manila ticket. I was prepared with documents supporting my yacht being in the Philippines as was often useful in the past. United Airlines indicated that the policy had been tightened and an onward ticket was definitely required. The ticket agent apparently needed to enter the onward reservation number into the system. To solve the problem I purchased a full fare one-way Manila-Guam ticket as I knew United served that route. That’s all I needed. Immigration in Manila did not ask to see the onward ticket. Nor did I need it for a visa extension. It was simple to get a full refund to my credit card when I canceled the ticket, online, a few weeks after arriving in the Philippines.

Thank you for providing Noonsite,

David Addleman

Yacht ‘X’

Posted 22 May, 2013

With reference to the above topic, we had the exact same problem Flying with Air Asia, and were denied boarding at the gate. Fortunately, I work for an airline and managed to purchase a ticket online there and then and once they had a ticket no. we were allowed on board! Oddly enough a few weeks later with Dragonair they weren’t the slightest bit bothered!

Graham

Yacht Sula

(Editor’s note: other cruisers have reported that as long as they carried their Customs Clearance papers with them, these were sufficient to prove that they would be exiting the Philippines on their yacht.)

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