If this post was written by a Chinese mother about her Chinese son going to Cuba with a USA domestic flight in the middle of his itinerary being denied by United Airlines - I am sure it would find no sympathetic listeners at all.

While I agree the powers that be could stand to do a better job of promulgating the restriction in question, I think people should always realize that visa free transit is an EXCEPTION to the general rule. And, anybody wanting to invoke the policy should be damn sure that it applies to their case.

But all sorts of places, like the Wuhan page I cited, make no allusion to the fact there are exceptions to the 24-hour rule.

And I'll remind you that some time ago when I suggested here that TWOV was needlessly complicated and that American and Canadian travellers should avoid a possible headache and consider just getting a visa, I was roundly shouted down as the crowd bayed that really, there's nothing complicated about TWOV. Why, just scroll through all those paragraphs on TIMATIC. If you have access to it.

I stand by that.

If you are already reading FT advice that you should spend money to get a visa you don't actually need is not the best advice available. TIMATIC is easy to read and plenty of folks able to interpret on here if needed.

If you didn't know about FT/other fora or TIMATIC then I agree the exceptions like WUH are probably a little obscure.

This is very poor advice in all respects. Neither the airlines nor TAs (online and brick-mortar) can be expected to have all the updated visa requirements for all nations and all nationalities. As another poster has mentioned, there are other countries in the world other than the U.S. and Canada. TIMATIC is a very useful source of information, and a warning from the airline or TA at the time of booking might also be appreciated, but neither of them absolves the pax's ultimate responsibility to have the right paperwork prior to their international travel. If one finds China's TWOV rules to be bit arcane (which they are), the proper outlet for complaint is with the Chinese government. However, this doesn't mean that it will respond, let alone read it.

I think airlines and TA absolutely should have updated visa info - and they do, in the form of TIMATIC. But I don't think they need to publish that information against every potential flight booking - it should be for the passenger to ask.

Unfortunately there's plenty of reservation staff that don't know how to use TIMATIC properly... not putting China as a 'transit' for example will incorrectly lead many to getting a visa they don't need.

Considering that the US and Canada require an (excessively expensive) Visa even for mere transit, I'd say it's hard to justify complaints about how limited the chinese TWOV may be.

If you're going to make use of a waiver, then you need to be pretty damn sure you've understood the rules. Even just for transit through any country, check the requirements since some of them require complying with their immigration requirements even if you don't step outside the airport.

That's setting up a straw man. The complaints aren't about the existence of the rule, but about the lack of any official announcement of it, and the existence of official announcements that indicate there'd be no problem with the itinerary.

And if you've ever been in this predicament, you'll understand well and good how difficult it can be to get accurate information on stopover rules.

I recently booked a flight that made a stopover for a couple of hours in a not particularly welcoming country. Did I need a visa for sitting in the airport for 90 minutes while the cabin was cleaned and the plane refueled? Official sites, social media and Timatic weren't completely assuring. The airline's local office didn't know, and they contacted Beijing, who also didn't know, though no doubt someone from the airline would know at check-in. In the end, no problem, but the concern obviously created some tension.

It's so easy to point the finger at the OP saying well, she just didn't try hard enough to get the right information. But that underestimates the difficulty of getting the right information, especially when the official sites provide no clue to it at all.

I'll stand by my earlier advice: unless there are time constraints, Americans and Canadians should forget the hoops and loopholes of TWOV and get the ten-year visa.

Timatic does not take into account special situations. Once a CX SFO checkin agent scanned my daughter's US passport and told her that her passport was expiring in three months, and to be allowed into Hong Kong, her passport would need one-month validity upon leaving Hong Kong. As my daughter still had 2.5 months when leaving HK, he could check her in. I told the checkin agent my daughter has the HKID and she would not be entering HK on US passport. The check-in agent said he only went by the system and would not check her in if the system rejected, and the system did not ask if she possessed a permanent HKID.

Isn't that an issue with the airline system and agent rather than TIMATIC?

TIMATIC states passengers with a HK (SAR) identity card are exempt from passport requirements to enter Hong Kong:

I wasn't aware that some airline systems might be linked to TIMATIC. It doesn't seem to be the case with CX for example who allowed check-in and boarding for a couple of friends in HKG without the correct visa for China.

It is kinda bizarre that a volunteer-run thread on FT has more reliable information on TWOV than any official Chinese website.

CX is Hong Kong-based. I was very surprised that CX (or the agent) did not realize that HKID is also a travel document when used in entering and exiting HK. It is probably CX system. I think they were linked to TIMATIC already (he did not mention TIMATIC but he mentioned IATA). It should also pop up HKID but it didn't on their system.

Just a small correction on your statement - it is HK permanent ID, not just HKID. Although temporary ones can also be used to enter/exit HK, TIMATIC only suggests HK permanent ID because it is difficult to know if a temporary ID has expired.

From the website of Consulate General of China in SF, you can only connect with a valid connecting ticker on an international flight. And the Wuhan - Guangzhou flight is clearly not an international one. And you can get a 72 hrs transit visa at the airport in other cities like Shanghai, it should not allow you to travel to other airports and leave from there.

And Priceline will definitely mention that it's travelers' responsibility to make sure that they have necessary travel documents for the journey.

That's a textbook example of a PRC consulate spreading incorrect information.

Indeed. I have yet to see 144-hour TWOV mentioned on any embassy website either.