Immigration Queues at 10am?

[Banana7]

Can anyone guess how long the wait will be at immigration queues outbound at about 10am Tuesday or Wednesday this coming week?

[KhunBENQ]

All I can tell you is that a big number of Thai Airways flights depart until noon (between 11 and 12), together with many other international departures to Europe (more and more of those daytime flights nowadays).

 

I was at Suv. on Tuesday, March 21 around this time of day spying through the windows.

The queues at immigration were not catastrophic but about 20 to 30 (?) people per desk. But that was not a particularly busy day.

 

The airport will be very busy due to Songkran but probably mostly domestic and international arrivals.

[KhunBENQ]

Just came to my mind: before going through, always check both immigration halls (through the window).

The one in the very back of departure halls is sometimes less crowded.

"International Departures 3" near check-in row "T".

It's a little walk that might pay off.

[Banana7]

So it sounds like 30 min. at immigration should be a reasonable estimate for Tuesday.

 

[Rhys]

Sorry, to digress here, but if you are married to a Thai can you go through the immigration booth for Thais only?  Seems it all depends on the people there...

[overherebc]

17 minutes ago, Rhys said:

Sorry, to digress here, but if you are married to a Thai can you go through the immigration booth for Thais only?  Seems it all depends on the people there...

I think that doesn't happen anymore at least on departure side. On arrival my wife always asks and 99 times out of a hundred they say OK.

[nisakiman]

On 12/04/2017 at 4:05 AM, overherebc said:

I think that doesn't happen anymore at least on departure side. On arrival my wife always asks and 99 times out of a hundred they say OK.

I went through the departures Thai immigration line with my wife a couple of weeks ago with no problem. Ironically the lines for foreigners were short, too, so it wouldn't actually have taken me very much longer to go through them. When we arrived in mid February, though, the foreigner immigration lines were horrendous, all the way down the ramp and into the concourse. Again, I went through the Thai gate with my wife, which took about ten minutes tops.

 

Departures seems to chop and change. A couple of years ago when I went to the Thai side with my wife, I was sent to the foreigner queue, which was huge. In fact, I barely made my flight (security had been painfully slow that time, too), and it was only by skipping the queue, apologising profusely and asking people if I could go to the front as my flight left in twenty minutes that I made it. And of course the gate was bloody miles away, so we had to run all the way. Fortunately one of the Qatar ground staff was waiting / looking for us about half way there, and radioed through to say we were on our way, otherwise we might have found our luggage on the tarmac and the door closed!

 

But arrivals, we always use the Thai side with no problems. I'm not sure why departures is different. It seems to be on the whim of the guy(s) on duty.

[overherebc]

29 minutes ago, nisakiman said:

I went through the departures Thai immigration line with my wife a couple of weeks ago with no problem. Ironically the lines for foreigners were short, too, so it wouldn't actually have taken me very much longer to go through them. When we arrived in mid February, though, the foreigner immigration lines were horrendous, all the way down the ramp and into the concourse. Again, I went through the Thai gate with my wife, which took about ten minutes tops.

 

Departures seems to chop and change. A couple of years ago when I went to the Thai side with my wife, I was sent to the foreigner queue, which was huge. In fact, I barely made my flight (security had been painfully slow that time, too), and it was only by skipping the queue, apologising profusely and asking people if I could go to the front as my flight left in twenty minutes that I made it. And of course the gate was bloody miles away, so we had to run all the way. Fortunately one of the Qatar ground staff was waiting / looking for us about half way there, and radioed through to say we were on our way, otherwise we might have found our luggage on the tarmac and the door closed!

 

But arrivals, we always use the Thai side with no problems. I'm not sure why departures is different. It seems to be on the whim of the guy(s) on duty.

May have something to do with the Thai passports that can be scanned and others can't be. We had similar in Aukland in departure where the scanners accepted my UK passport but not SWMBO's Thai passport.

[Banana7]

I went through immigration in about 5 minutes on Tuesday April 11. The check-in at Eva air was very busy. I arrived at 9:10 for a 12:20 flight, and it took me 1 hour to get a boarding pass and luggage checked in.