New Zealand Travel Forum

Hi everybody.
This question came to my mind after reading some questions in the forums today. It is about what hapened to us in December when we left New Zealand going to Australia. Our plan was to spend three days in Sydney and then back to Europe.

At the border control in Auckland airport, the officer was a bit rude/unpolite, and she asked for the "normal" documents(boarding pass, passport...) as in any other country. But then she asked us for a ticket showing that we was leaving Australia somehow/sometime. I didnīt understand it. She ordered us to show her the plane tickets from Australia to London. I don`t know if that is legal and I would like to know if that has happened to any other traveler. I mean, we could have checked in our plane tickets, luckyly we had it in our "hand-lugage" with the rest of documents.

Thank you.

It has happened to me but not at border control, but at checkin.

I am a NZ citizen as as such have free access to Australia. The checkn in agent had checked my passport for a re-entry visa and when she found none, she asked why. As she had not heard of the arangement between Aust and NZ she called a supervisor who explained it to her. Apparently, it is part of international airline policy that you cannot be checked into a flight from which you cannot get off.

Does this help?

Yes, that may be an explanation. Thank you very much.

If I understand it. You mean that without a plane ticket to leave Australia I could have been rejected, so the officer made sure that was not the case?

exactly. Apparently the airline are not supposed to allow you on the flight if you will not be allowed to enter at your destination. That is how it was explained to me. The airline can become liable if they allow check in and passage you when you will not be allowed to enter the country under certain circumstances.

I would always advise having all your ongoing tickets in you carry on luggage.

I also know of a case where a visitor to Australia would have been refused check in for a visit to an outside country, then returning to Australia, if they did not have their final outward tickets from Australia with them as proof of final transit from Australia. I am sure this applies to other countries as well.

What the immigration officer did was perfectly legal. In more and more countries, when you enter into the country, you will be asked to show your return tickets/outgoing travel tickets or plans. I heard that this is to ensure that you're not overstaying or try to stay in the country permanently.

Sensitive countries : USA, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada

Its all crazy anyway. Mostly from the tickets iv'e seen its cheaper to buy a return ticket to a destination than a one way ticket.So if someone wanted to overstay, all they need do is throw the return bit in the garbage after they've passed immigration control.

I am a US Citizen and when I went to check in on Air New Zealand at LAX the Air New Zealand agent asked for my return ticket which I thought odd since all she had to do was look up all flight info on her computer. Plus, with electronic tickets, we didn't have tickets, so I just showed her our printed out itinerary. At AKL when we arrived, I noticed signs that said to have return flight documentation ready, so I got out our itinerary again, but was not asked to see it.

Another aspect to this is another safeguard in these times of hijacking etc. If a hijacker was silly enough to not have a return ticket or another place to be expected then that surely would ring alarm bells for the ticket officers.

Carole.