wk989

Hi all,
On my last entry into China at PVG, I applied for and received E-Channel access. I have heard that when departing, if the name on your ticket does not *exactly* match your passport, the E-Channel will fail and you will need to be cleared manually. Unfortunately, I have a rather long name and many airlines are unable to print the whole given name on my ticket. Is this true, and if so, do you get head-of-line like with US Global Entry if the gate fails? Flying to ICN in a couple days and would really like the 30mins extra sleep if possible…
Thanks for any insight!

travelinmanS

I don’t even bother to scan the ticket when leaving PVG or SHA. Just put your passport on the machine and see if it works.

wk989

Datapoint for others: scanning e-channel on exit with or without BP did not work at PVG. The name is cut off on the ticket.

moondog

Did you submit a bug report?

narvik

Maybe we need a separate catch-all E-Channel thread?

I've had some trouble since signing up this year, but not sure if still part of the standard operational procedure or not.

1) Signed up a couple of months ago on entry at PEK after immigration.
2) Left PEK some weeks later and E-Channel worked for EXIT, although had some trouble convincing the E-Channel agent that I was 'allowed' to use it, as they kept wanting to send me away to the 'normal' line.
3) Arrived in China again at PKX, and again had trouble convincing the agents that I could use E-Channel. This took some convincing, as they were adamant I was not allowed to use E-Channel. Scanned passport, and was allowed through the first gate. Took fingerprints, and screen showed "approved" or some-such, but the second exit door wouldn't open, and I had to go to the manual immigration after all. Then they took about 30 minutes to scan my passport, inspecting it with a loupe and the likes, presumably as they suspected a forgery...this went on and on, with several officers having a turn, until they realized their scanner was malfunctioning.

They said E-Channel would work on next Entry.

Does this sound right? After signing up, it works on exit but not on re-entry until after a manual entry is processed. Or is it because I signed up at PEK but re-entered at PKX???

And what do you guys/gals do to convince the agents that you're E-Channel eligible???

moondog

Just pretend you don't understand them, smile, and keep walking.

narvik

No dice: on arrival at PKX I was physically stopped/blocked at first.

moondog

Hmm. It's a foolproof strategy down here IME.

narvik

Pushing someone out of the way? Highly doubt that.

moondog

No. I was talking about ignoring the people pointing at the normal lines. They have yet to resort to blocking me.

travelinmanS

我申请过了 has never failed to work for me when they question my use of echannel.

wk989

I had a conversation with the agent supervising the E-Channel. He seemed confused that it didn’t work and told me to apply again. I didn’t know it was possible to submit an actual report, but maybe he did? Manual processing line for foreigners was long yesterday. Most I’ve seen since COVID.

GinFizz

Quoting the three posts above as it seems sensible to comment on the points and question raised in one reply ...

Certainly in the past it was not possible to use e-channel on exit without some manual intervention unless the name on the boarding pass exactly matched the name entered from the passport into the system during registration. This was the case when a boarding pass scan was required before entering the queue for the exit (emigration) gates.

According to @narvik there is no longer a boarding pass scan for exiting China, so less likely that the name could be an issue (unless the scanner reads the passport name and compares this with the registered name, possible I guess - should be sufficient though to just use the passport number coupled with the biometrics, but maybe the software is over-designed ...).

@narvik: Following your advice in another thread I (re-)registered (new passport) when re-entering China in late June by asking after passing through immigration. What I was told at that time was that after registration I should be able to use the e-channel for exit directly, BUT that next time I arrived back in China I should first use the passport/fingerprint machine, and after that use the e-channel gates. Maybe that explains why it didn't work for you?

narvik

Ah, thanks for that. Makes sense now. I'll try next time.
It appears that my issues are compounded by the fact that my passport seems to have readability issues. It always takes several times and several machines to scan. Just used it again to exit China and it worked after several tries.
(Passport never scans properly in Japan for some reason...)