Just wondering, does anyone have recent experiences with the 15 day Visa free entry? I’m going to China for the first time ever in about 10 days time. My Australian partner got a Visa while I travel on my German passport so I intend to use this new rule.

Now that the date comes closer, I’m getting a bit nervous to be honest. Not even worried about the Chinese immigration, more about those third party check in agents in Sydney (SQ Business class, SYD-SIN-PVG) who tend to be a bit moronic at the best of times.

What would be the best documentation on this to bring with me? This is the most “official” notice I could find (Mandarin only it seems):

https://www.mfa.gov.cn/wjbzwfwpt/kzx..._11186388.html

Anything else I should bring along (aside from return travel confirmation, hotel bookings etc. for the Chinese authorities on arrival)? Would be grateful for any recent experiences or suggestions, just so that I will sleep well over the next week or so

Whoever checks you in will presumably have full access to timatic, but you might want to make a print out or grab a screen shot of relevant text to make sure you are on the same wavelength.

So this system used on check in would have this up to date information in it? I’ve tried the “Visa check” functionality on IATA’s website earlier and that came back with the below which would rather indicate that I’d need a VISA regardless. One of the reasons I’m getting a bit nervous:

Thank you for your help [MENTION=4346]moondog[/MENTION] So I’m assuming on the system that the airline will use, these exemptions are listed in more detail than what the publicly accessible IATA “check” does? Because that does not talk about any exemptions at all and I don’t think any screengrabs from the internet will help me.

I’d hope that in any case I’m not the only one in Australia who’s a dual citizen from one of these countries so at last some supervisor would have had this situation before. Just don’t quite trust them- I would have zero fears if I was checking in with proper SQ agents in Changi.

The airline is an IATA member, so its employees/agents have the latest and greatest data at their disposal.

Some IATA members (e.g. I used Emirates in my previous post) provide timatic front ends to their customers as a courtesy.

I suggested you might want to run a query yourself, so you have a basic idea of what the check-in person is looking at, even though their screen might be more recent/detailed.

That's what I’ve done on the publically accessible interface on the IATA website (which is what Singapore Airlines refers one to) and as per my screen shot above, it has no mention of any visa exceptions.

I don’t think one can use the actual Timatic without access to a GDS or can I?

Let's give a value of 10 (on a 10 point scale) to the data the airline retrieves via its API calls.

On the other end of the spectrum, I'll award the IATA public feed a value of 3 (not less because it's better than walking in completely blind).

Meanwhile, I'll put the websites IATA members generously make available to us at ~7. They aren't perfect because they might lack detail and they aren't real time (i.e. maybe only updated weekly and it's conceivable that changes could occur between when you query and when you find yourself at the gate in Singapore).

Wouldn't you prefer to be armed with a 7 than a 3?

To be honest, I appreciate your help but I don’t feel all too comfortable to rock up to an international flight into a country I’ve never been before and have anything less than a “10” printed in my hands. Especially if the only “official” IATA resource that I can access tells me that I actually need a visa.

Maybe my need for security is over the top but I’m still not any wiser. So would be great to hear actual experiences with this from someone who has been recently.

Here's another TIMATIC screenshot for you:


You can probably find 50 more if you set your mind to it; I'd be shocked if more than 2 or 3 didn't convey the "no visa required" point clearly.

If you had your own login, you'd arrive at the same conclusion, but this extra infinitesimal fraction of a degree of certainty wouldn't materially strengthen your position vis a vis the person who determines your fate; their screen will always be the gold standard and yours will always be slightly short of that (kind of like proving pi to 5 v 1000, 10000, 100000,... digits....never quite perfect).

"wwtknoyb" just did as one the first planes to arrive with this new policy for the new 6 countries. See here: China 24, 72, and 144 hour Transit Without Visa ("TWOV"), 2024 onwards

Your concerns are valid: your biggest hurdle may very well be check-in in Sydney.
If you go through with it, plan in an extra few hours of 'padding'.

Well, sure, being en route when the policy took effect with the airline people trying to calculate the precise start time (jobs on line if they screwed up) certainly wasn't for the faint of heart, but this is a scenario that applies to pretty much no one.

In Sydneyberlin 's case, there won't be any such chaos or ambiguity. All the staff has to do is read/process the information that is staring them in face.

IATA - Personalised Passport, Visa & Health travel documentation advice (iatatravelcentre.com)

This is what is in Timatic

Even if you did have issues initially, having some knowledge of what's in TIMATIC and being able to assert or escalate your case respectfully should resolve any misunderstandings that a ticketing agent might have. I can't say they're all like this, but many TIMATIC entries I've read are presented in the format of "Visa Required" and then go on to list exemptions further down in the text.

I have three examples in recent times where I was going in with a 3 to 5 out of 10 level of knowledge and had an issue with a ticketing agent.

The first was a misunderstanding at the BA counter at ORD 7 years ago when Mrs. Majuki was traveling on a Taiwanese passport. (I'm not trying to start anything OMNI/PR here.) The ticketing agent said, "China needs a visa." I replied, "That is for passengers traveling with a Mainland Chinese passport. Look in TIMATIC under Chinese Taipei." We got our boarding passes within a minute after that. Would a passenger without knowledge have been denied boarding? Perhaps not. However, knowing what to look for and what to say likely helped resolve that situation without escalation.

The second was when I was doing SYD-HND-YVR on the $600 NH J fare in late 2017. The ticketing agents briefly requested an eTA to which I replied, "US passports do not require an eTA." That cleared the issue in seconds.

The third and most complex example was at the SAS counter in Oslo back in August. A fellow FT member and I were flying on the OSL-EWR flight, and the other FT member was waiting on his green card at the time and had Advance Parole. For those unfamiliar, this is essentially a reentry document to allow someone into the US. Now, AP is clearly listed in TIMATIC. It's way down on the list, but it's there. It took 3 agents, including the supervisor, multiple phone calls to the back office (and supposedly even a telephone consultation with the US Embassy behind the scenes), and over an hour to clear the passenger to fly. Of course, he had no problem clearing passport control in Newark.

In the SAS case, I wouldn't be surprised if the ticketing agents had never seen a traveler on AP previously. There is only one flight per day to the US from OSL, and my guess, without evidence, is that almost all travelers on that flight originating in Oslo have a US passport, Canadian passport, passport eligible for the Visa Waiver Program, a green card, or USA visa.

The bottom line is that having some knowledge of TIMATIC puts you way ahead of having no knowledge. I like the example moondog gave of pi. Knowing 3.14 quickly gets you past any hurdles in 99% of cases and has in 2 out of 3 cases I have personally experienced.

Yes! And it is EXACTLY this website that made me start worrying to begin with! As per my post and even screenshot above, it simple tells me I need a VISA (German passport, flying in two weeks time, duration of stay exactly 2 weeks so even a bit less than 15 days). No mention anywhere of these relatively new exceptions on that page, even if I scroll all the way down.

So this is the whole reason I started posting!