Posted June 02, 2019 07:10:16We all know the “no questions asked” rule in the US.
The US Airways blog post about their new fares, for example, states: “We understand that your first flight may be booked online or through a travel agent, but you are asked to provide a valid US passport or visa.”
So, the rules are pretty simple, right?
Wrong.
It turns out, this “no queries asked” policy isn’t as simple as it might seem.
A new study published in the journal Aviation and Space Law has revealed that a wide range of airlines are actively seeking to circumvent US immigration law by claiming that they are booking flights from their host countries.
For example, a Chinese company named Air China claims to have booked flights from Singapore to Hong Kong on a Boeing 777.
This is a pretty straightforward way to circumvent the “stopover” requirement.
The problem is that the Chinese airline will not have the right to claim that the flight is booked through a ticket agent or travel agent.
Instead, they’ll have to use a third party agency, such as a travel agency.
This third party agent will be able to confirm that the ticket has been booked by the airline and will then send the information to the airline directly, giving the airline the right of refusal to rebook the flight.
However, if the company claims that the tickets are booked by a third-party agency, it will be hard for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to identify the agency.
So, if you’ve booked a flight with Air China, it may be harder to identify them.
A new study conducted by researchers at Boston University School of Law found that between 2009 and 2017, Chinese companies booked between 11 and 29 flights per day on 737-800s.
This number was much higher than the number of flights booked by US-based companies, but still a substantial number.
So, if your US-registered airline booked 11 or 29 flights on 737s per day in the same period, that means that between April 2009 and March 2017, the Chinese companies have booked over 14,000 flights.
This means that, on average, China has booked around 1,600 flights per month, and over a million per year.
That means that if you are a US citizen, you may be facing the possibility of having to pay fees to get your US passport stamped.
For example, if a Chinese airline booked flights on US-owned Boeing 737-700s in March 2017 and booked them on the same day that they were cancelled, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would have to pay over $2,000 per flight for a stamped US passport.
This is because, as the study explained, if an airline uses a third Party to book flights, it cannot claim that they have the same “right of refusal” to re-book the flights.
The reason is that, under US law, a “stop over” is not allowed to occur until the next scheduled flight, so an airline cannot claim a “no-questions-asked” policy as a legitimate reason to book the flights from a third country.
But, the study also found that the third party agencies that were booked by Chinese airlines were more likely to book multiple flights per year, with more than 20 percent booking over 2,000, and 7.7 percent booking more than 3,000.
What to doIf you’ve been asked to pay to get stamped in the USA, you can find out more information about the process here