US: Full visa needed for 2 hour transit!
 

As I'm bored waiting for the garage that's fixing my car to give me a call, tell me to collect it and relieve me of a significant chunk of next month's beer money, I decided to kill a bit of time looking at RTW itins. I wanted my transpac bit to be TYO-CCS. As far as I know, Skyteam doesn't have any flights from Asia to S. America (or even Mexico despite the AM hub! :mad: ), so I'd have to go on CO through IAH. A very good connection was found with only a 2-hour-long layover, and there were no other transfers involved (a simple case of NRT-IAH and IAH-CCS on the same airline, presumably utilising the same area in the airport). So I go on the US embassy website to check transit visa requirements, but there is NOTHING on them. Therefore I have to call them only to be told, after being subjected to 387295961842 random recorded messages that were no help whatsoever (if you pressed you wanted visa info you were routed to a bloke describing what a machine readable passport looked like and some other equally useful bits of info),
that the US don't issue any transit visas, I'd have to apply for an "ordinary" one, and that this is the reason why all of their airlines are doing so well (or maybe they forgot to tell me about that but anyway). Muppets. :mad:

Most US airports lack a "clean" international transit area, so in order to transit you have to enter the US. There used to be a transit without visa program but apparently there was too much risk that the visa holder would wander off and forget to leave the US.

Many international travelers have found it easier to bypass the US rather than transfer in the US since the demise of TWV.

That was my intention, too, but there seems to be no way around the US for any Asia-S.America trip if Skyteam is to be used, there isn't even an AM flt to Canada!

My advise is to fly NRT-YYZ-CCS. Try to avoid US at all costs. ^

Nothing new actually. If you land in the US you must "fully enter", regardless of what you're doing (ie transitting to another country, vacationing, businessing...). And starting today, unless you're Canadian, you'll be photographed and fingerprinted regardless....

That said, the only way to bypass the US coming from Asia & going to South America is either JL NRT-YVR-MEX, or LA SYD/AKL-SCL. Like you said, as far as SkyTeam goes, KE does not fly to Mexico, and AM does not fly to Canada....

Quite strange!
 

There MUST be people travelling between Asia and S. America! Surely it'd make sense for a major Asian airline to fly to MEX or EZE with codeshared connections, wouldn't it? :eek:

I am Canadian and they fingeprinted and pho'd me as well so it does not matter it is anything goes in America. i don't think there is any direct flight betw Asia and S. America at the present moment.

It's a function of the requirement of having to clear US customs at your initial entry point. There are no airports that I know of that have international transit areas where you can avoid clearing customs, a la Schiphol, etc...

By the way, it's always been this way, this is not a change after September 11th.

Not quite - there has been a change. In the past the NZ service AKL-LAX-LHR (same a/c with a short stopover at LAX) used to bypass immigration for transit pax and put in a secure gate lounge for the transit (cannot enter the main part of the terminal). Pax are still put in a secure gate lounge but I have been told they must have immigration checks as well now :rolleyes: Will find out for myself soon what this means.

Not quite true. Not only, as Kiwi Flyer says, did LAX have a sterile holding facility but so did (or still do?) MIA and HNL. IB uses MIA as a hub but will stop this as it doens't work for their pax flying between Central America/Caribbean and Europe anymore. HNL was used as a transfer hub by AC, CP, QF and NZ (pre alliance) to transfer pax between YVR/YYZ and SYD/AKL. It used to be no check (by INS), then INS wanting to look at passports when you disembarked (prior to Sept. 2001), to full clearance and customs after Sept. 2001. So many people are choosing to travel from Canada to Australia via Asia these days.

For many Asia --> South America connections it is currently just as quick to fly via Europe. My colleague who is flying between Taipei and Sao Paolo often, always flies via Amsterdam. She tells me it takes just a long as flying via the USA.
There is also a MH flight between Kuala Lumpur and Buenos Aires via Johannesburg.

Of course there is. AF and KL offer many connections via CDG and AMS.

Yeah, I was talking about changing planes from one to another in the US, going from say, Spain to Canada. There used to be a "transit-without-visa" program (TWOV) under which people would be escorted from one plane to the other without clearing immigration or customs. That's gone; now pretty much everybody needs to clear imm & cust.

As others have indicated, this is incorrect.

The USA suspended the TWOV program following September 11 in yet another asinine decision that doesn't really improve our nation's security.

But curbside checkin of checked bags was also temporarily suspended following September 11, and thankfully it was reinstated (since its availability had nothing to do with terrorism).

Perhaps the USA will someday come to its senses and again be friendly toward the other people in the world.