What does Timatic mean by saying: Only one transit stop-over in Saudi Arabia is permitted
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 19 Jul, 2023
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The fault in your logic is presuming that “Transit Without Visa” and “Airside transit” are the same thing – they are not.
Airside transit does not allow you to leave the international transit area of the airport (ie, you must remain “airside”)
TWOV is a more generic concept, where the rules vary between countries and depending on your citizenship. In some countries, TWOV is only available if you can remain airside during the transit – in which case it is the same as Airside transit.
However in some countries, TWOV can allow you to not just go landside, but even remain in the country for a day or more, move between airports, and even take a domestic flight before departing the country.
The best example of this at the moment is China, which has multiple different types of “TWOV”, some of which allows many travelers to stay up 144 hours. Some of these visas allow the traveler to depart from a completely different airport to the one they arrived in, and thus their itinerary could include a domestic flight as a part of the TWOV.
Specifically for Saudi Arabia, some passengers that are transiting without a visa MAY be allowed to exit the airport (resulting in what is technically not an “airside transit”), however this is at the discretion of the immigration staff. It also used to be possible to include a domestic flight during a TWOV itinerary, but only if all flights were on Saudi Arabaian Airlines – however it’s not clear if this is still the case or not.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘