Do Airline Ticket Offices have to Inform customers of visa requirements when purchasing tickets? [duplicate]

We purchased tickets at Air Asia's ticket office in Yangon Myanmar for travel to Australia, with a flight change to New Zealand. As UK passport holders, we were not informed we needed visa's to transit thru Sydney Airport to board our Air New Zealand flight. Upon arriving in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to catch our connecting flight to Sydney, we were refused boarding and given no assistance by Air Asia. We were stranded in KL for 3 days until we could buy new tickets. To date Air Asia has not replied to a single phone call, email, twitter or message. What is the responsibility of the airline in regards to providing visa information? If the Airline refuses to respond and considering, there are several thousand complaints available on the web about Air Asia's lack of customer service, what is one to do?

Best Answer

No they have no obligation. Visa requirements are highly complicated and depend on many factors, not just which country issued your passport. It is your job as the traveller to understand whatever visa requirements or other restrictions as they apply to you individually.

Incidentally, you did not need a visa if you were arriving on an international flight at Sydney and departing also on an international flight, with less than eight hours in between, under an ordinary UK passport endorsed "British Citizen", and you did not intend to leave the international zone in the airport (for instance to collect bags). If you have a different type of UK passport (such as "British Overseas Citizen" or "British Protected Person") then different restrictions may apply. If your transit actually included domestic travel inside Australia or you needed to recheck your bags, then you could have applied for an evisa (subject to certain requirements) online and this would likely have been approved within a matter of minutes.

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Do Airline Ticket Offices have to Inform customers of visa requirements when purchasing tickets? [duplicate] - Crop smiling Asian female in white shirt using ticket vending machine with touch screen in underground

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Do Airline Ticket Offices have to Inform customers of visa requirements when purchasing tickets? [duplicate] - Interior of old box office with golden details under schedule in Grand Central Terminal

What are the visa rules?

Passport should have at least six months validity at the time of making application for grant of visa. It should have at least two blank pages for stamping by the Immigration Officer. The validity of all visas will commence from the date of issue of visa.

Should I show my credit card at airport?

No, the credit card is used for the payment of the ticket only. Depending on the requirements of airport authorities, you will need to present your travel documents and a mobile boarding pass, a paper boarding pass printed out by you or a paper boarding pass picked up from the check-in desk.

What do you need for travel documents?

Adult passengers 18 and older must show valid identification at the airport checkpoint in order to travel.

Driver's licenses or other state photo identity cards issued by Department of Motor Vehicles (or equivalent) ...
U.S. passport.
U.S. passport card.
DHS trusted traveler cards (Global Entry, NEXUS, SENTRI, FAST)

What is an electronic ticket for a flight?

An e-ticket (electronic ticket) is a paperless electronic document used for ticketing passengers, particularly in the commercial airline industry. Virtually all major airlines now use this method of ticketing.

When to Book Schengen Visa Flight Reservations (Europe Visa)

Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: Samson Katt, Samson Katt, Samson Katt, Charlotte May