And now a lesson on flying into New Zealand.
It would be great if you could just decide you want to go somewhere, purchase a ticket to get there, and jump on the plane. Sadly we live in an age where invisible boundaries mean added hardship to travel. Even worse is that it's not always so easy to find the right answers when crossing these borders.
I went to New Zealand's immigration and visa website trying to find out how to come and say hello. After clicking through a series of pages to find what should have been an easy answer I came back with what I thought was right. It wasn't until I got to the airport in Sydney and checked in for my booked flight to Christchurch that I found I had a problem.
New Zealand requires incoming passengers to have already purchased an onward ticket out of New Zealand before coming into their country. For this reason I had bought a ticket from Auckland to Melbourne. Unfortunately I still managed to screw up. At the Virgin Blue check-in desk at the airport I learned three more important details:
"Passengers requiring to hold an outward ticket from NZ must hold a ticket or acceptable evidence of a ticket from NZ to:
1. A country that they are a national of; or
2. A country where they have evidence of permanent residence,; or
3. A country where immigration authorities of that country have confirmed that they will accept the passenger for entry into that country on a one-way ticket.
While I had my onward ticket back to Oz I was still lacking the visa to get there. For the visa you have to apply for it ONLY from outside the country. Since I was still in Australia I couldn't get the visa I needed to get back in. Since I didn't have the visa I violated the 3rd exception. Confused? Yep, me too.
I won't bore you further with stories of my running through the airport to the Qantas desk, back to Virgin Blue, over to Air NZ, back to Virgin, to Qantas not once but twice more and eventually back at Air NZ to buy a ticket from Auckland to Los Angeles. With this "refundable" ticket I was able to board my flight. What a mess!
Posted February 6, 2005 10:22 PM @ (GMT - 6)
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