Return flight ticket to/from the Philippines

Do you need a return ticket when you travel to the Philippines? After all, most nationalities can travel to the country without a visa and are allowed to spend there one month, after which you can extend your stay for as long as 3 years. I will tell you about the rules and my personal experience here.

1. Entry requirements to the Philippines

This was my first time travelling to the Philippines, and as a digital nomad, I don’t want to move on to other places too often. It is tiring, makes productive work impossible, and also too expensive. On the other hand, I had no idea how much I would like the place, and how soon I would feel that I need to move on.

This should be no problem at all, but unfortunately, if you read the entry requirements on the official government website, you will see that one requirement for the 30 day visa exemption is a return or an onward ticket (similarly to another notoriously difficult case, Sri Lanka). Unfortunately, there is no mention of which date from your date of entry the return ticket should be valid for. So no-one knows and no-one wants to state clearly, whether it is OK if you have a return ticket, but it is valid for two or three months (or a year, for that matter) later than your date of entry.

2. Airlines, rather than immigration officers stick to the rules

But there are stories about how airline companies interpret the rules: you must have a return/onward ticket within the 30-day visa free period, or else you are not allowed to board the plane.

Now since I had this very similar experience with Sri Lanka, where I used AirAsia, and where I didn’t have a return flight and got away with, I thought maybe I could do the same in the case of the Philippines, too. For some some reason though, mainly because there were so many dreadful stories online about being denied boarding because of a lack of a return ticket, I decided to buy an onward flight ticket anyway.

One of the easiest way is to use a price compare site like Skyscanner, where you have the option to search for the cheapest flights from a given city anywhere. This way, I found that a flight ticket from Manila to Macau costs about 40 USD with AirAsia, so I bought it, although I had no intention at all to actually use it. I decided that it would be wise to consider it as a visa fee to the Philippines.

3. Self check-in and self service baggage drop – do they help?

What saved me from problems in the case of Sri Lanka, I thought, was that I had no communication with anyone during check-in. This, I thought, guaranteed that there was no-one to question me about a return flight out of Sri Lanka.

I did the same when I was travelling to the Philippines, simply because it is easier and quicker than queuing at the normal check-in counter. And that was fine: I successfully checked in my luggage, I had my boarding pass, and I went through all the security checks, and finally appeared at my gate at KLIA2.

Unlike in the case of Sri Lanka, there was no further security check at the gate here. Good news, after all, I thought to myself, and I started to be angry with myself for wasting a precious 40 dollars on something that was entirely unnecessary. No-one ever asked me about/for a return flight, even though I have one.

But being the super cautious worry wart that I am, I still prepared the confirmation email on my phone, should anyone still walk up to me from nowhere, and ask me, excuse me sir, can I see your return flight? To be honest, I wasn’t even sure which flight I bought eventually, because I was hesitating between several options like Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong or Macau. Imagine when they ask you about your onward flight, and you say: Yes, I have one, but I am not sure where, wait a minute, let me check…

4. Problems appear only at the actual boarding

And they announced that boarding had “commenced”, and we all queued up. And then, to my great surprise, I saw a man in front, who obviously had a problem with some documents. He was asked to step aside, and he was searching, browsing through papers in his bag, while the boarding assistant was talking to him, and then taking out his phone – it’s not impossible that he was trying to book a flight right there in front of the check-in woman. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the end of the story, whether he could eventually board the plane or not, because at this moment, it became clear for me, that they were asking him about the return flight out of the Philippines, and he certainly couldn’t produce one.

So I quickly grabbed my phone to find my onward flight confirmation email – and check, where on earth I actually bought this stupid 40-dollar ticket to. When I got there, they looked at my passport, and YES, the first question they asked me was where I was planning to go after visiting the Philippines. I triumphantly said: Macau! But then the next question of course was: Can you show me your flight itinerary? But why, of course I can! – and they wished me a pleasant journey (yes, they did check all the information on my booking).

5. Advice and tips

The best advice I can give you is follow the rules, the not-so-clear ones too, which means buy an onward ticket which is valid before the end of the 30 day visa free period. If you are sure you don’t want to leave the country that early, buy a cheap ticket anywhere, like I did.

Some bloggers and forum posters recommend various online services where they produce you a flight ticket to show at check-in or boarding, but which is not actually a usable ticket. I have a feeling that at least some of these tickets are simply fake, and they also cost money. Now if you would only save a few (dozen) dollars, I’m not sure it is worth it.

And do you know what happened to my 40 USD ticket that I was not planning to use at all? It got reimbursed by AirAsia, because my flight could not operate on the given date because of some volcano activity near Manila. AirAsia offered me the option to postpone my date or get vouchers – I opted for the latter.