Originally Posted by
rkkwan
You have to have a same day or early next morning plane ticket in order to take a ferry to HKG. I've never been to the SkyPier ferry terminal, but I don't believe it has HK immigration and customs there.
That's right - no Immigration at HKIA SyPier.
So, if she does have a connecting flight that day, and have to go into HK for whatever reason, I believe she still has to take the train to the main terminal first, and then find a way down into the arrivals level and out HK immigration.
Maybe if she has a boarding pass, as she could get through SkyPier security with it. But there is absolutely no way to be admitted into HK from the HKIA SkyPier directly. I ran into such a situation just this morning: We boarded the ferry from Shekou with a confirmed departure from HKIA. Once we got to the SkyPier and were standing in the check-in line, our flight was cancelled, and the rebooked flight was in 2 days.
They told us that it is simply not possible to enter HK from the SkyPier, even under such circumstances, and that the ONLY option was to return to China via the ferry! If we wanted to spend the 2 days in HK instead of China, they told us the only way to do so would be to take the ferry back to Shekou, then another ferry from there to Central. Fortunately for us, our flight was "reinstated" about an hour after it was cancelled, and ended up departing 2 hours past schedule.
The problem is that you can't get through security at the SkyPier without a valid same-day boarding pass. We could not be issued one since our flight had been cancelled. Had a similar situation occurred where we already had boarding passes, we'd probably have been able to get through SkyPier security unnoticed and then once airside, get to the main terminal and somehow to arriving Immigration from there, but it's not possible without a boarding pass. And, the ferry terminal at Shekou can't issue boarding passes for certain airlines (such as UA) at all, and even CX boarding passes can't be issued there if your destination is the US, so there are some situations where all appears good at Shekou but then unravel by the time you get to the check-in counter at the SkyPier.
It's a highly unusual and unlikely corner case, but it can and does happen. So beware.