--On Monday, November 10, 2014 17:57 -1000 Fernando Gont
<fernando(_at_)gont(_dot_)com(_dot_)ar> wrote:
...
Do airlines give full refunds if you don't get a VISA, I
doubt it.
Not at all.
Not unless one buys fully refundable tickets, of course - see
below.
...
IIRC, in most cases, what they require is an
itinerary/reservation rather than a ticket.
If a reservation is required, it can be almost equivalent to
requiring a ticket, since many airlines won't hold a reservation
for a cheap/ refundable ticket for very long without buying the
ticket. "Not very long" can be as short as hours. Sometimes,
one can buy a reservation hold for a longer period (72 hours, a
week, ...) but that price, while much lower that than of a
ticket, is typically non-refundable if one does not end up
buying the ticket (and sometimes even if one does).
The problem here is that, as you note, you have two options:
1) Buy the ticket prior to getting the visa -- with the risk
of not getting it in time and hence wasting the ticket/money,
or,
2) Wait till you get the visa before buying the ticket -- at
which point the ticket prices can be insane.
(3) Buy a fully-refundable ticket, whose advance-purchase price
may or may not be significantly lower than late purchase,
"Insane" prices but will certainly be a lot more than the
non-refundable ones you refer to in (1).
All the above sad, I should say that, as far as
central/south-americans are concerned, e.g. Europe tends to be
way more friendly than North America: I can travel anywhere in
Europe (except Russia, I think) without a visa... but need a
visa for US and Canada.
Unfortunately, generalizing from any given country or regional
experience is not helpful. As an example, a few central/south
american countries reciprocate US and/or Canada visa
requirements and procedures, not only requiring visas, but
pulling the same "we will not formally turn you down, but may
keep your application in a 'processing' state until the time of
the meeting or other event, or at least the plausible airfare
window, has passed". I speak from experience, having had
Brazilian and Chinese visa applications timed out despite
allowing lots of application time.
Also note that there are country pairs in which the destination
country may be very relaxed about tourist visas (or waivers for
tourists) but may require formal visas for business or meeting
attendance. A subset of them do make an effort to keep track
and react very harshly to someone entering as a tourist and then
doing business/ professional stuff. One thing I think no one
wants is to have to answer a future "have you ever been deported
from a country or denied entry because of visa or immigration
violations" question with "yes".
Generalizations are _very_ risky.
Michael's conclusions are, IMO, the correct ones. I would
restate them as:
(1) Do not experiment with November meetings. Pick places where
we at least know what we are getting into.
(2) Do not pick locations that are known for being tourist
destinations -- they can make consular officials nervous in ways
that locations where no sane person would go except on business
do not... and nervousness often results in visa delays.
(3) Set things up so that people have _lots_ of time for dealing
with the slowest and more conservative of processes. That
probably includes not only getting our invitation letters out
early, but having experts design them for maximum persuasiveness
and probably individualizing them more than I assume we have
been doing (but I don't know, having never seen one).
john
john