JPDM

How to challenge them exactly? Seems that one needs to challenge head office. If their official internal information says that it is based on arrival times, pretty hard for a front line employee to let a passenger through based on whatever he shows.

You are right, but the issue is not about crossing immigration, it is about boarding the plane to start with. The point is not who is right, it is about getting the airline the let him board the plane.

It seems to me that this experience should tell everybody to be somewhat cautious with transits in excess of 72-hours. I don't understand why everybody is getting so defensive and so insisting on being right. This is useful feedback to keep in mind.

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

Hopefully the OP, now inside the 72-hour period, is on their way to China? (Or direct to Bangkok)

moondog

Since you asked, here's how I would challenge them:

1. Spar with CA for a few rounds myself
-my research skills are solid, and I know how to craft --on point-- demand letters
-but, I'd pass on the baton in pretty short order (e.g. could be a year long process), which leads me to step #2

2. Request our second order law firm (not as expensive as the top tier guys, but still has offices in China and Sweden) to stay the course
-they keep 70% of the eventual proceeds
-no settlement offers entertained (I suspect that many people who've been similarly wronged in the TWOV thread accept such, including NDA, and therefore fail to advance the greater cause)
-the ~$3000 our law firm takes home is actually a decent proposition for them because we're honestly only talking about ~10 hours of actual work

The bottom line is that it only takes 30 minutes to set #2 in motion, and there's nothing to lose.

wanderingdev

so...this has me freaking out... I have a flight booked BCN - BKK - PEK - LHR Arriving into PEK at 0600 on 28th and departing 1600 on 31st. I booked according to the 00:01 rule. I will be in BKK for a few days before my flight. Would it make sense to go to the air china ticket office in bangkok, or even out to the airport, before my flight to get some kind of written confirmation so I don't run into this problem?

jiejie

You may be working yourself into a lather over nothing. I'm not sure we've heard of any problems with misinterpretations of TWOV rules in the last year by CA airline staff at BKK, have we? I'm willing to be corrected on this. At any rate, it wouldn't hurt to visit CA office in the city and doublecheck with them, if it gives you piece of mind--I'm not sure that anybody will issue you a written confirmation, but if there is uncertainty there, they certainly would have time to call appropriate people to verify. Keep that number for PEK Immigration (given several posts upthread) handy, to offer up--though I doubt it will be needed.

Thai787

As a side note to this thread, I have spoken with the European call centre for Air China, also the airline's London ticket office a number of times, and they have always confirmed that they are compliant with the 72 hr TWOV starting at 00:01 the next day rule in Beijing.

And just to be 100%, (or as near as possible), safe, I spoke in person to someone at the LHR T2 airline desk today, and , once again, they confirmed that 72 hr from 00:01 is perfectly fine, having shown them a print out of my itinerary, which like the OP is for more than 72hrs.

I hope the OP managed to get it sorted.

Regards, Dave.

jiejie

I think this was an ARN staff problem, and I'm hoping that not hearing from the OP for a number of days now on the forum, means that things got sorted and he is enjoying himself somewhere in Asia right now.

YuropFlyer

That thingy is BRUTALLY outdated. Last page it says:

"Beijing Capital International Airport is the only airport that is eligible for the 72-hour visa-free policy"

Got stuck in year 2012, Air China?

Seriously, they're just showing up a terribly bad show. Considering Air China is THE national carrier, the Chinese government should make sure to send those guys not doing their job and bringing shame to China for some proper re-education somewhere FAR away from any international airport.. I'd say a coal pit would be appropriate..

MSPeconomist

It's no more outdated or incorrect than some of the Chinese consulate websites.

It can be amazingly hard to find a clear and current official statement (in English) of TWOV rules.

moondog

At the risk of beating a dead horse, timatic is clear, current, in English, and official.

MSPeconomist

I'm still thinking of my experience with DL. They did consider a printout of TIMATIC from the SkyTeam website to be official. Instead, they wanted to refer to the USA Department of State website for information about the admission of USA citizens to China combined with their own "beliefs" that everyone going to China needs a visa.

moondog

Duplicate

moondog

Of a printout isn't official (easy to doctor), but the data itself is.

Andre

That horse is not dead at all.

TIMATIC is a database maintained and published by an airline association called IATA. While the information it contains is indeed very reliable, and it is trusted by many airlines, it is most certainly NOT official!

The ONLY official sources for Chinese immigration law are the relevant Chinese authorities (National People's Congress, Ministry for Public Security, provincial Immigration authorities etc). Full stop.

I assume you meant that DL did NOT consider TIMATIC official - that makes sense. But referring to the USA Department of State instead is tragicomical. Does any DL employee in charge of determining whether passengers have appropriate documentation for their destination actually believe that the USA Department of State has any say in the immigration policy of a foreign country?? That is just scary/sad.

BTW, DL even explicitly cites the 72+ hour policy on their website - but only for PEK

That's great news, Dave! So you should have no issue, and it's good to have a positive data point for CA at LHR.

However, given the OP's experience, the current content on CA's website, and the absence of any official documentation for the "72+" hour rule, I would not generalize this to all of CA, nor to any other airline that doesn't explicitly publish its policy re: that rule.

In summary, until / unless someone is able to provide official confirmation of the "72+" hour rule, I stand firmly by my original advice in this post.

airotique

I hope the OP at least got to go on his trip, eventually - and I'd be curious about an update.

As it happens, my girlfriend and I had a very similar experience in ARN on 31 DEC that I would like to share here (and rather not open a new thread, as I had originally planned).

We were to get to PEK on 01 JAN at 09:40 and leave for BKK on 04 JAN at 13:20 (same flights kunus), but the people from CA claimed that the connection was not compliant with the 72 hour rule.

Referring them to TIMATIC had zero effect. Initially, the assistant station manager claimed that "TIMATIC is not official. We know the rules. We are CA. We were the first airline to 'offer' 72 h visa free stays." My argument that it is the P.R.C. government that makes the rules, not CA, was disregarded. When I asked him to provide a source of these rules, he handed me the CA brochure which has been linked to in this thread. To my mind it certainly isn't any more "official" or clear than the TIMATIC entry.

In the course of what evolved into a rather loud and lengthy discussion at the check-in counter, the assistant station manager's argumentation changed. He no longer disputed TIMATIC. Instead, he offered a different interpretation of the TIMATIC entry. In his opinion, "starting from 00:01 on the day following the day of entry" would actually mean that counting starts on the SAME day as the day of entry - so essentially, before you even arrive. My pointing out that this idiosyncratic interpretation is illogical because why say "on the day following the day of entry" if what you mean is simply "on the day of entry" did not appear to shake his belief. I agree with the previous posters: I find the TIMATIC wording not only clear, but unequivocal. However, at the time, my focus was on boarding a flight to PEK, not winning an argument on semantics in which reason did not appear to get me anywhere, anyway.

That's why we accepted paying SEK 918 for having our PEK-BKK flights changed to an earlier date. Although this involved a late cancellation of our hotel reservation in PEK and having to make last minute arrangements for accommodation in BKK, we were glad to board that flight and not having to spend NYE in Stockholm without hotel reservations.

Unfortunately, this unpleasant experience wasn't over yet. On 03 JAN I received an e-mail from CA, explaining that they had made a mistake and only charged us the rebooking fee for myself and that my girlfriend "will have a problem on your return flight", unless we contact CA and "transfer the money". Back to semantics: to us, this wording seemed to suggest that my girlfriend's flight was in jeopardy. It certainly didn't raise her relaxation level on this holiday.

Given that it was CA who made the mistake, I asked them to call us instead - which they did. When my girlfriend offered to provide them with her CC details, she was told that CA are unable to accept CC payments without the card being physically present and that they would phone us again to provide us with their bank details. Although CC was her preferred means of payment, I couldn't quite understand why CA wouldn't just send us their bank details by e-mail.

After having exchanged six e-mails over the course of two weeks and CA figuring out a way for her to pay them by CC and we din't run into problems on our return flights.

CA in ARN later reverted to their original argument. Supposedly, they had consulted with immigration in Beijing who had confirmed their interpretation of the 72 hour rule. Now they claimed again that the TIMATIC entry is wrong and that they "have been trying to contact the responsible person from TIMATIC and hopefully they will change the information so that the public can get the right information."

When transiting through PEK on our way back, I asked the immigration official in PEK to clarify the 72-hour-rule. Contrary to CA ARN, he explained that it's simply "three days", counting from your day of arrival and that the exact time at the of day of departure "doesn't matter as long as it is on the third day following the arrival" - which essentially boils down to exactly the same as what it says in TIMATIC and which corroborates the statements from CA that Thai787 received.

I'm planning to alert IATA to this matter and ask them to confirm with their sources. If the TIMATIC entry is indeed correct, I feel CA has wronged us and at the very minimum we want to get our rebooking fees back. I find the way how the OP and we were treated by CA ARN unacceptable. Any advice on how to best proceed would be greatly appreciated.