Flight delayed and immigration in BKK

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You don't mention your citizenship. If you require to pick up your luggage and check-in again, then you will have to pass through immigration. And in order to do that, you will need, depending on your citizenship, either:

  1. A pre-arranged visa to enter Thailand.
  2. A visa on arrival.
  3. A visa exemption.

If you're from Sri Lanka, you'll need a pre-arranged (transit) visa. And another one on your way back, if you have the same itinerary in reverse. Getting off the plane, walking (probably a long walk) to and going through immigration and checking in again in 1.5 hours, best scenario, in Suvarnabhumi, is impossible. And today UL406 arrived 35 minutes late. You've just missed your plane. You'll be much better off with UL404...

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If there are checked bags, and there's no option to do through check-in, then the passenger will have to:

  • have the necessary paperwork to enter Thailand (depends on citizenship, may require a visa)
  • disembark (can take a while if at the back of a large aircraft)
  • walk from gate to immigration
  • go through immigration
  • wait for bags
  • go through customs
  • go to departures
  • get to the check-in counter
  • check in / drop bags before the deadline (usually 1 hour before departure)
  • go through passport control and security
  • get to the boarding gate before the deadline

The main issue is getting to the check-in counter in time. If there's 1h30 between flights and the deadline is 1 hour, that means that even with the inbound flight on time, the passenger needs to get from seat to check-in counter, via immigration, bag reclaim and customs in 30 minutes. This seems impossible to me.

The Lucky Air website is only available in Chinese, and I couldn't find the actual deadline, but I doubt it's much less than one hour.

If you factor in the possibility that the flight might be delayed, that there could be a long queue at immigration, that bags may take a while to be delivered on the carousel, and that in the event the second flight is missed, it will be the passenger's responsibility to book and pay a new flight (possibly the return as well), you should factor at least 3 or 4 hours between arrival and departure.

The alternative would be to avoid checked-in luggage, as long as you can do online check-in (not sure that's actually possible on that flight) or can do the check-in at a transfer desk.

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