What does "country of residence" mean in flight reservations given its different meaning in different contexts?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 4 Aug, 2023
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Does this box have immigration implications or is it just to verify travelers’ identity upon check-in?
What you put into that field doesn’t matter in the slightest. As explained in the answer to For UK/USA bound flights, are details entered during online check-in, such as date of birth or passport number ever checked by airlines/immigration?, the only fields that actually matter during both the booking and the check-in process are First Name and Last Name. Every other field about the passenger could be completely wrong and you’ll still be allowed on board.
So feel free to select any country where you consider yourself to be a resident and don’t worry about choosing the "wrong" one.
Country of residence is usually the country you reside in for long term. This can be due to variety of reasons. A person who resides in work visa, long term study visa, dependent visa, permanent residency and all counts towards that.
For instance, you are an Indian citizen, working in US using H1B visa will be considered a US resident (Not a permanent resident). The rules may be different for each country, but generally accepted practice is stay for more than 6 months for the last one year period.
As far as airlines are considered, residents have some exceptions or additional requirements they need to verify. Normally, residents don’t need a return ticket or a proof of accommodation when boarding a flight to country of residence, provided they can establish that by showing appropriate visa. They may qualify for automated immigration gates, etc. This is to make job of check-in agents easier. For immigration officer, they will validate as usual, depending on your visa.
It looks like there is no consensus on this question. Different carriers likely use “residence” to mean different things, as it is a poorly-defined word.
For my specific case, I contacted American Airlines support and they said “Country of residence” should be the place where you currently live, even if you are not a permanent resident of that country. They said it is not the country of residence for immigration purposes. So a nonresident alien living in the US should answer “United States”.
Edit: In my case, since it was a domestic flight, I called to confirm that the country of residence doesn’t really matter. Nonimmigrant aliens can answer “United States” as their country of residence.
Country of residence is one of the many parameters used to determine whether you require a visa for your trip. It can definitely have immigration implications. It’s especially relevant if you can document it (e.g. you have a residence permit) and you know that this exempts you from some visa requirement somewhere.
If you use TIMATIC, you will see you have to enter your country of residence. If it is indeed relevant, additional conditions (and especially what documentation may be required to establish your residence) should be detailed in the output.
I would therefore use “residence” in the immigration sense (and not any other legal definition). As explained in another answer, you should however get a chance to correct that later on. To the extent that residence does matter, it will be checked again later in the process.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘