momentine

Here's the TIMATIC entry that I pulled from ExpertFlyer. I'm not too worried, as I have a 10 year visa for CN, and I'm only flying this itinerary OW to FOC. I've called around to all the relevant agencies (QR, VY, the Algerian embassy in DC) to see about my options, and they all seem to think it should work. Transiting will be tricky, but I'm hoping my friend and I will be 'lost-looking' enough to gain attention.

globetrotter94

Hey, did the twov work at the end? We are facing the same situation. (Canadian and German). We will fly with Vueling to ALG and connect onto the 11 pm flight with Qatar. I called the Algerian embassy month ago and they told me it is no problem. I am now worried. We have a visa for china. My main concern is getting the Boardingcards for the QR flight. Did anyone who flew this had online checkin available?

lewende

It's no problem.

momentine

Having just done this yesterday for our run tomorrow, checkin for QR opened 48 hours before hand: we were able to get a confirmation (not the boarding pass) for the ALG-DOH segment, and a boarding pass for the DOH-HKG segment. Likely, they'd need an agent to verify information, and print off the ALG-DOH boarding pass at ALG. If QR operates a desk at your embarkation airport, it might be worth checking to see if they can verify and print your ALG-DOH boarding pass for you.

globetrotter94

Same here, confirmation from alg to doh only. We are on tomorrows evening flight. Im hoping that Vueling let us go to Alg like that. I will try with QR staff tomorrow before we fly from bcn but im not expecting much.

momentine

Flew Vueling this morning to connect to QR1380. I'm sitting in the Air Algerie lounge right now, so transiting without visa worked out! Vueling did check for a visa, but we told them we were just transiting Algeria within 24 hours, and the women at the counter checked TIMATIC, and confirmed us. They checked again at the boarding gate but didn't press when we brought up transiting. We arrived in Algiers at 7am, through the jetbridge, down the stairs, and right up to passport control and told them we were transiting.

We had to wait at passport control for about 2.5 hours (on some benches next to passport control, during which I listened to podcasts) as the Qatar desk in ALG hadn't opened yet. Around 9:30am, a gentlemen from Swissport comes down and collects our passports. 20 minutes later, the Qatar checkin agent comes down herself and escorts us back airside with our boarding passes and passports. This involves climbing up the stairs we had came down, walking up to a security checkpoint, pausing the checkpoint's operations, and going through the checkpoint backwards, and up to the lounge.

Hope that helps - just make sure Vueling let's you board, and you should be good to go.

schofs

I could be wrong above actually - while the departure and arrival crowds are mingled, another member of the parish tried this and got stopped due to not having immigration stamps on his FOC-HKG boarding pass.

globetrotter94

Thank you! We will fly tomorrow,qatar staff at BCN just printed us the boarding cards from ALG to DOH so hopefully we dont have to wait so long :P Yay

keitherson

Glad TWOV worked out for you guys. It's just much harder on the return since you cannot check in online with Vueling from ALG so you may have to wait hours at passport control if you don't have a visa for the check-in desk to open. With QR you can check in online for the BP so you can go straight into the departure terminal.

Also, QR does not use the Air Algerie lounge. That is the better lounge at ALG but QR uses the worse contract lounge.

lewende

That's right, you will need an immigration stamp to board. To that extent, I am not sure if one can do an immediate turn at FOC.

globetrotter94

Hey guys, no problems whatsoever during check-in in BCN. Was a wise choice to print tje ALG-DOH boarding card in BCN. ALG Airport accepted it with no problem. Transit took around 30 min, we had to fill out the immigration card, went to the passport check and were then walked up to departures by some algerian staff with no uniform. The lounge is very average, but clean.

TGflyergirl

Little sister got denied in BCN on VY 5 days ago doing the same thing as Momentine above. I'm only just reading this now, so it may very well have been a case of self interpretation of the rules.

whimike

I just flew this ticket outbound. Pretty strange, flew IB from MAD to ALG and I did online checkin and got an electronic boarding pass for both the IB flight and my QR flight, both ALG-DOH and DOH-HKG.

Nobody checked my passport at MAD and upon boarding they just looked at my passport page to make sure my name matched the ticket but didn't check for any Algerian visa nor checked to see if I had an onward flight.

Even more odd is that at ALG they gave me printed boarding passes all the way to FOC, and at HKG upon boarding to FOC staff there never checked to see if I had a Chinese Visa, nor for onward travel.

I was surprised by the overall lack of passport checks.

keitherson

I've noticed this too. Airlines are horribly inconsistent with mobile boarding passes. But as soon as you need a paper boarding pass, they do all the doc checks.

How did you book this fare for so late? When the fare was filed, end of schedule was around Feb.

whimike

I booked the flights right at EOS. Outbound Feb 3, Inbound Feb 14.

Just as a data point, there were 3 others on my flights that were on this fare. 3 friends that were young guys (maybe early 20's), all speaking German.