Official .gov.uk and other sources such as Vietnam embassy and Vietnam visa companies state clearly that UK nationals with valid passports do not rquire visa if they travel for holiday<45 days. However, the airline denied some people I know from check in because “they don’t have visas”. Can someone please help and check what Timatic said on 16th March 2025 at 08.30 GMT for UK passengers flying out from the UK to Vietnam staying less than 45 days on that day? It would be really interesting to see if Timatic would get it wrong.
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6This unanswered Travel.SE question from five years ago suggests in comments that prior-date Timatic content is not available to users.DavidRecallsMonica– DavidRecallsMonica2025-10-15 17:00:05 +00:00Commented Oct 15 at 17:00
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2Were these British citizens travelling direct to Vietnam? With passports valid for at least 6 months upon arrival?Traveller– Traveller2025-10-15 18:24:36 +00:00Commented Oct 15 at 18:24
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2This website mentions that the 45 day visa-free entry policy came into force in Aug 2023, if correct it seems unlikely that Timatic would get it wrong so long afterwards.Traveller– Traveller2025-10-15 19:38:14 +00:00Commented Oct 15 at 19:38
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1Were the passengers "regular" British citizens (and not BNO for instance)? Did they have return or onward tickets?jcaron– jcaron2025-10-15 22:56:22 +00:00Commented Oct 15 at 22:56
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1@Gabi 10 Days? Sounds like this was for China and not VietnamCrazydre– Crazydre2025-10-22 06:01:24 +00:00Commented Oct 22 at 6:01
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1 Answer
There is no known public interface allowing access to past Timatic data.
While Timatic is occasionally wrong (either late changes or incorrect policy, mostly for special/edge cases), it would be quite unusual that it would be in this situation. The change goes back to 2023, and references to that policy in Wikipedia from back then already pointed to Timatic. It's also a pretty straightforward policy.
What is more likely is that there were other conditions that were not met by the passengers, for instance:
- Their passport was not valid for 6 months beyond the date of arrival
- They are not "regular" British citizens, but have for instance a BNO (British National (Overseas)) passport
- They did not have a return or onward ticket departing less than 45 days after arrival
- A visa was required for some intermediate transit country (relatively unlikely with a regular British passport, but there may be some weird routings where this would be the case).
Of course, another possibility is that Timatic was perfectly correct but the agent wasn't (some rely on their memory and don't even check Timatic, or there could have been some data input problem). This is quite unlikely if it was a directly flight from the UK to Vietnam (they would end up turning down dozens of passengers), but if there was a connection, the agent may know the rules for the destination of that specific flight but be less aware of those for Vietnam.
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+1 I regularly engaged with one of the Timatic managers for a decade since 2014 (doing research and requesting corrections) and agree it's unlikely to be incorrect about something like this. More likely they got a numpty handling staff member (if they really were British but told they needed visas).Crazydre– Crazydre2025-10-22 05:59:01 +00:00Commented Oct 22 at 5:59