remdk

Amarone since the regulations state a maximum of 30 days before use then You should be able to apply successfully from November 19 th. But there is an unanswered question in that we do not know if it is 30 days is from departure of the qualifying return journey or 30 days from that flights arrival in DOH. In your case it is no problem because all departures from BKK that day are same day arrivals. Try again in two days time (Sunday) and you should find that your outbound flights are no longer shown but your inbound ones are and you can apply for a visa. There is no need to buy a visa.

Please do report back as to what happens. This facility is very new and there are many who are having problems with understanding the new system. Once enough experience can be gathered I intend to put this information in a Wiki so every confirmed fact is useful.

Amarone

Right - I tried to apply this morning and the system came up with my return flights and let me proceed! Now waiting for confirmation that I've been approved.

I didn't have time yesterday to try to apply so I'm sorry I can't verify whether the system would have allowed me to go ahead yesterday. Anyway I hope this is of some assistance to other FTers.

Many thanks remdk for all your help with this!

remdk

With the changes to the existing free tourist visa the newly introduced 96 hour tourist visa has had an unintended side effect on the existing STPC and Doha bus tour free tourist visas. As Qatar-transit-visa says "The transit visa can be availed in one direction only for the entire journey."
Thus if you apply for and are granted a tourist visa then you cannot use either STPC or the City bus tour for the entire journey both outward and return.
Since the STPC and City Tour visas were free tourist visas before the recent changes, they will also be affected by the changes.
I assume that it is not permitted to have more than one valid visa active at a time.

irishmanlev

I do have two 22hrs transfers in Doha (not qualifying for STPC).

Is it possible to have the free visa for one direction and the paid one in the other?

remdk

irishmanlev a very good question! I have found no documents that give any satisfactory answer so my answer is based on my undocumented observations.
I would imagine that a visa 'dies' when you leave the country and that there would be no problem in reentering the country on a new visa. Having said that the free tourist visa is different in that Immigration regulations limit it to one visa per reservation.
Multiple entry visas, if they exist, do not seem to be a problem here.
So I think that you may be allowed to do as you suggest but I would recommend that you contact the immigration authorities by e-mail and explain the problem.
As far as I know their contact details are:-
General Directorate of Borders Passports and Expatriates Affairs
E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 44890333 Fax:44823777

crombiestone

I received my transit visa today with the explanation that the delay was because they changed the visa validity from 90 days to 30 days . That is maximum 30 days validity from the date of issue to the date of entry into Qatar.

sdsearch

What does "entire journey" mean if each direction is on a separate ticket?

I have separate tickets for my outward than my return (since it was an award booking). Now, in my case, my return has too short a connection for me to wander outside.

But there might other people who have each direction booked separately who do have long connections in both directions.

remdk

sdsearch It is possible but there are a number of different limitations so this will be a complex answer.

1 As far as I can see each ticket would need to have their own PNR. If you have two tickets on the same PNR then that is one entire journey.
2 Single journey tourist visas are available, provided they do not originate in any of Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sudan and UAE.
3 You cannot have two tickets such as LHR-DOH-LHR and DOH-BKK-DOH. DOH must be a transit point for onward travel.
4 You cannot apply for a visa on a second reservation until you have either used the tourist visa and exited Qatar again or it has expired.
I think that 4 would be the biggest hindrance but 2 can affect a number of journeys. Do you have time to apply for a visa while at the destination?

The rules talk about reservations and you are talking about tickets so be careful that the definitions match up.

sdsearch

The example i was giving was two one-way award tickets (each direction booked around the time the booking airline could see the availability, eg at 330ish days out). If someone booked two one-way award tickets because used different miles for each direction (eg, AA miles in one directon and BA Avios points in the other direction), the same scenario would apply.

In such a case, it's separate tickets, separate PNRs, separate reservations, separate everything. The only things in common is that it's the same passenger and may have been booked through the same airline using the same frequent flyer account.

But I agree with you that issue 4 is the most restricting, given that it means you'd have to apply for your second visa while at your destination.

plunet

The latest update is that the transit visas have been approved after some faffing around. They seem to be very picky about the image of the passport page.
A digital photo was rejected - it had to be a scan.
And then some of the scans were rejected as they were not clear enough.
I do pity those who are not clueful with technology to be able to handle the image submission process.

thecurtisw

Thanks for posting that link! Super helpful.

crombiestone

Yes I had some issues with my passport photo . First attempt rejected though it looked fine on my pc . Upped the scan resolution which tbh looked worse on my pc but they accepted !

rodjune

I scanned my passport four times and captured a digital photo, each time rejected. Since QR limits the upload file size, I could not get a clearer image without exceeding the file limitation of 500kbs (even though the scans looked exactly like my passport page). Instead, I decided to fly to DXB for a quick visit during my long DOH transit.

crombiestone

I should have also said I used a program called Irfanview to resize the 18Mb scan to 500K

Peadar

We fly Ex DUB, stay one night AUH or DXB - onwards and then one night stay on the return. What use is this transit visa to us come QR DUB flights next year?