Centurion

The visa is never actually stamped. There should however be a port of entry stamp somewhere else in your passport.

Xena

Thanks, I did find it after I had posted my question! Am going to email the airline and see if we can get extra - its worth a try.

soulrebel

Yeah I was wondering that, how would they know? My passport is stamped on a different page to the actual visa page when we validated it last year.

Thats also making me wonder if we should have had a special stamp on the visa page or will it be ok for validation purposes with a regular stamp on a different page????

Sorry if this sounds confusing.

soulrebel

So will singapore airlines look for a port of entry stamp then?

Xena

Am hoping not as we are flying with them in November but am not going to take the chance - am going to email them to see if they will allow us the extra baggage and if not will just have to make do.

mecheng

I've never understood why the Americans get it so lucky with respect to so much luggage. It's just not fair!

JCSUPERMOTO

Does a "fanny pack" include in a piece of luggage?<sniggers>

theotherphil

Qantas give 2x23kg but the tickets are more expensive (but massively cheaper than paying the excess). However when I travelled recently, I was over on each of the hold luggage cases by 2kg. The lady asked to weigh my carry on so she could maybe redistribute some weight but that was over by a lot....it weighed 12kg. She told me to take it off the scales before somebody noticed and let me on without charge. She told me not to do it again on the way back lol! Very nice

Pollyana

They scan your passport at check-in, that verifies whether the visa has already been validated

CDM

Here's a brief review of my experience with Singapore Airlines from London to Melbourne:

OK, we just arrived 2 days ago, having flown with Singapore Airlines from London Heathrow to Singapore on the first leg and Singapore to Melbourne on the second leg.

We claimed our double (2 x 20Kg per person instead of 1 x 20 kg per person) baggage allowance which would have been a total of 160Kg (2 adults and 2 children). All the woman did to verify that we had unused visas was to kook for the visa itself in the passport physically. No further 'checking of validity' was undertaken that I could see. To our complete and utter surprise, all our checked bags came in at a whopping 181Kg - a full 21Kg over. At £35/kg as excess weight, we were stareing at a £735 excess baggage charge. One of our bags (21Kg) had food stuffs in it that we might have wanted to simply discard but it had already been whisked away by the baggage belt and the woman insisted that it was no longer retrievable once it had disappeared.

After some 'discussion' about the merrits of the various options, the woman eventually (and somewhat reluctantly) called over the supervisor to explain the situation. She had us weigh all our carry on luggage (each piece was between 8Kg & 12Kg - you're only allowed 7kg) but we only had 3 pieces. Even though we were still over the total allowance after adding up checked and carry on luggage, she ultimately decided to 'let it go this time' but was quite stern in giving us a good ticking off for being over the allowance. It was the narrowest of escapes for us but we managed to get everything checked through to the other end.

When we found our luggage on the belt in Melbourne, we did have a bit of a problem, as we had to push to tired children and 3 fully-laden trolleys full of luggage. There are no porters at Melbourne and there are no large trolleys either. Still we somehow managed to get everything through to customs. They scanned everything and wanted to look through just one bag (which contained only clothes). We had declared that we had food stuffs and that one bag was inspected but we were allowed on our way otherwise without hinderence or incident.

Singapore airlines are a fabulous airline to fly with. I'm not saying this because we got away with not having to pay a huge excess baggage fine but because of how well they handled everything from the check-in desks to the in-flight duties. We flew the Airbus A380 (the double-decker) for the first 13 hour leg and the Boeing 777-300ER Dreamliner on the second 6.5 hour leg. Both aircraft appeard to me to be brand new. The in-seat entertainment systems have very large screens and included a huge range of games, radio stations, TV programmes, movies and the geographic location system (the map that shows where you are, what the temperature is, how long to destination, time at destination and so on). I'd have to say the the entertainment systems are the very best I've come across and the staff were just fantastic - especially with our 3 & 4 year-old kids.

The power systems in the arm-rests do NOT accommodate the UK-style 3-pin plugs but they accommodate pretty much every other nations' plug style as far as I could tell. I had been under the impression that the UK plug would fit and so this was the only type of adapter that I had with me. As a result, I was unable to plug in my laptop so I can't comment on how well the power port did/would have functioned.

As far as the visa and the immigration stamp is concerned, our visa were NOT stamped but a separate page in our passports were. I did ask the immigration agent about this and she told me that the visas are not stamped and neither is this necessary. Although we arrived with shiny new permanent residency visas, we were treated no differently than anyone else that got off the flight. There was no obvious recognition of the fact that we had entered the country for the first time and neither did any immigration agent seem to care one way or the other. Apparently, everything is done automatically when our passports were scanned, just like everyone elses, and thus the fact that we had passed through the immigration border was somehow automatically recorded somewhere.

And so, after several years of contemplation, nearly 2 full years since the actually application, many months of preparation and many weeks of actually going through the motions, we're now here in Melbourne and acclimatising. And now if only the kids will stay asleep through the night ...

- CDM

lynetteh

Great info.

Does anyone know if we would still receive the 40kg allowance on Singapore Airlines if we had a stop over of 3 days in Singapore? I seem to remember reading somewhere that the extra allowance is not available with a stopover but now I can't seem to find the info

Thanks!

CDM

There is conflicting info on this issue. When I spoke over the phone to Singapore Airlines, they told me that the additional allowance was only applicable on a direct flight (i.e., only with a connecting flight without an extended stopover). However, there have been reports here of people who claim that they DID get the additional allowance even on a stop-over flight. Probably best to get in touch with SIA and get them to confirm one way or another.

- CDM