Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the fact that Airlines have been, in my opinion the "wild card" when we have been dealing with inbound Immigration here to Thailand and even in certain cases outbound Immigration for folks going to the United States.

What are we talking about here? Well you have to understand, Airlines as carriers, they are a common carrier so they have certain obligations associated with bringing people to and from different countries especially where they are bringing a foreign national in to a country. If that country essentially turns that person away, that common carrier may be on the hook, again it depends on the circumstances, but may be on the hook to provide that person passage back to wherever they came from. In the COVID era this it is not really a good thing in a sense for these Airlines from their point of view because it creates a lot of extra risk and cost risk, risk of cost or unforeseen costs associated with people that are coming to a country and then they get turned away. 

For this reason, I have noticed that the Airlines can be a lot more stringent about documentation, way more stringent even compared to certain Governments or Immigration Authorities. It is one of the reasons why when we discuss this with a lot of clients, we tell folks "you might want to bring quadruplicate copies of documentation" because I have seen this; it has definitely gotten a lot smoother now than it was especially like a year ago a little less than a year ago when we were starting to see people being able to come back to Thailand but coming through especially with connecting flights and most stuff we deal with that is coming in from the US especially, is going to have to deal with a connecting flight be it Japan or Korea, sometimes Hong Kong, Singapore they may have to connect through somewhere. Well in that connection there can sometimes be some hiccups because the airline staff want to see all this documentation to get you into Thailand again because they are afraid, yet again, that you might get turned around. In many ways and I don't blame them, they come by it honestly. They have to protect their own interests and they are trying to do the best that they can but I have seen a lot of circumstances where Airline Personnel have actually been more the sticklers for documentation than even Immigration Authorities. It is not exactly a common thing but it is not uncommon either.

So folks that are looking to travel especially to Thailand or coming out of Thailand going to the US just kind of have that at the back of your mind that Airline personnel are also a factor when you are thinking about travel documentation for making a smooth transition from one country to the other.