Originally Posted by
IAN-UK
Originally Posted by
fender5787
If you are on a non-P fare business ticket, there is a special fast track immigration and an arrival lounge you can use, and it never takes more than 1 or 2 mins.
Oh yes it does!
Officers can be spread quite thinly across the general positions and the two special lounges. Indeed the Maha lounge has had to put out a request for an immigration officer when I've rocked up without notice: and a couple of weeks back the wait for the lone officer in the premium lounge to cope with a couple of less-than-straightforward customers caused quite a build up for him to deal with - and caused me to miss the last metro.
Last month I arrived in DOH in F. Presented inbound boarding pass to the QR staff agent (to demonstrate eligibility for premium immigration) and had to stand there for 10 minutes (yes I timed it) while he was typing something.
Then shown to the e-gates. Didn't work. Immigration officer was summoned. Took another 11 minutes for them to come. 2 minutes to log in to computer. Then I had to do biometrics which took 4 minutes.
Originally Posted by
QatarA340
If I book my ticket as an American citizen, I cannot enter Qatar as a Singapore Citizen because its a free visa. You have to use the same passport to enter as you booked your ticket.
You don't "book a ticket as [any] citizen". Where API is required for a particular itinerary, this only needs to be provided at the time of check-in. If you've entered your API at the time of booking, you can change the passport entered until you check in (online) and it can also be changed by an agent until check in closes (possibly right up until to boarding time).
Originally Posted by
AntonS
Originally Posted by
nilsfr69
surprised that the Immigration officer could see which passport you used on your booking?
I don’t think they saw it, but immigration officer asked and thats when it started… I travel with two passports all the time and it’s normal to use different passports in different countries. The airline usually has passport data which I I used in my previous destination and in 20 years it was never an issue, so I think Qatar officer came up with something out of the blue.
Originally Posted by
brunos
Originally Posted by
florin
I also travel with 2 passports and routinely use both on the same itin. I don't understand the point about using the passport you've used to book the ticket; that seems like an arbitrary choice that makes little sense to me.
I get that some countries ask for the passport data to be sent ahead of the flight, so they can do some checks. Most countries require the airlines to make sure that every traveler they bring into the country is authorised to enter the country. But why assume that everyone has only 1 passport? Airlines should realise that you might end up using different passports to enter different countries.
As
AntonS clarified, the immigration officer did not have/checked the information on the ticket. He showed his US passport first and that is what created trouble.
Routinely, countries do not check the booking passports vs the one presented at immigration. The problem might arise for countries requiring some form of ESTA before flying.
API is submitted to many countries. Even in countries where no travel authorisation / electronic visa is required, when you present a passport to immigration, the computer system may be able to retrieve your arrival flight details from the API.
Some countries don't care. Evidently, Qatar does care. It is not clear exactly what happened to @AntonS but if the other passport was presented first then no corresponding arriving flight would have shown up on the system.
Thailand is another country which requires you to enter using the same passport that was submitted in the API. As with the Qatar experience described here, I was also able to get the Thai officer to change the passport in their computer system, but not without a lot of discussion / grumbling and 15 minutes of typing.
Airlines certainly know that many people have multiple passports, but if the traveller presents a passport that is allowed to enter the destination, they are not going to ask if you have another one just because there may be a visa fee.
If you are travelling XX-DOH-USA your US passport must be in the API, and on most itineraries QR would not even expect you to want to enter Qatar during the transit.
Originally Posted by
cagcag
Traveling with both USA and Turkish passports. Itinerary:
IST- AUH. On Etihad
Connecting AUH on Etihad
AUH-DOH
Arrival into DOH for overnight and continuing
DOH-CEB on Qatar.
Usually just use USA passport. To avoid any DOH immigration fees, I seem to need to use Turkish passport.
Must the entire itinerary IST-AUH-DOH-CEB be on one single passport? Check in in IST with Turkish passport, as usual?
It is technically possible to have a different passport linked to each segment but the EY check-in system and/or agents may not allow it or know how to do it.
The entry requirements for Philippines seem to be the same for US and Turkish citizens. Given that you want to enter Qatar, unless there is a special reason to use US passport to enter the Philippines, it sounds like just having Turkish passport in the API would be easiest.
Perhaps Philippines doesn't (presently) care which passport is on the API anyway - try presenting US passport and see if they say anything!
One workaround is to ask to not be checked in for the full itinerary, but sometimes this is not allowed, especially on QR where on most transiting itineraries you are not allowed to get checked bags delivered in DOH.