Are Dummy Flight tickets accepted in Schengen Visa Applications and What to look for while buying dummy tickets?

Yes, Dummy flight tickets are officially accepted for Schengen visa application, however, some countries within Schengen zone where you are applying your Schengenvisa, may require you to furnish actual flight confirmed reservation, so it is very important to select the right itinerary and right embassy at the same time.

Some examples of countries among Schengen area accepting dummy or temporary hold flight booking.

1.         Finland: officially ask for Travel plan/Itinerary, so a dummy ticket would suffice that.

2.         France: officially ask for Reservation of a return ticket or travel itinerary, dummy tickets work here.

3.         Estonia: officially mentions that tickets should be bought only after visa has been issued.

4.         Luxembourg: officially mentions either reservation or tickets. (so, hold ticket reservation works)

5.         Netherlands: specifically mentions they don’t need a ticket (dummy flight ticket works)

These are just few examples of embassies which already accepts dummy flight ticket options, however, depending on your itinerary, you may have to find if the respective embassy you are putting your application, ask for only reservation or an actual flight booking! (as it may differ from country to country within Schengen states).

Now, we know that dummy flight tickets are widely accepted for visa applications, let’s find out how to find and look for while buying these dummy tickets.

What to look for while buying dummy tickets?

Before I explain you soon from where you get these dummy tickets, you have to first know how these tickets hold period works. These dummy tickets are basically reserved and hold by the authorized travel agents. The official processing time for a Schengen visa is usually 14-15 business days, so ideally the hold time for these tickets should minimum of 2 weeks from the date they are processed in the system.

However, there could be many agents who can hold it for a small period only such as 1 -2 days or sometimes 3 and they automatically get cancel within the system. (You must have seen this while booking air tickets online either by airlines or sometimes by third-party portals). Most of such customer buying these tickets have little or no idea about the impact it may cause on their visa application and by the time a visa officer checks their applications and wishes to check the validity of the reservation, the PNR or the Reservation Code may not work by that time and can cause suspicion especially for first time travelers.

Most people do such mistakes that in order to spend less money on visa assistance services provide by travel agents providing super cheap mouth-watering prices, they go for buying such tickets and end up getting visa rejections. What they don’t understand is they end up wasting more money on the embassy and VFS fees all total.

You may by this time also probably think, that you may have come across other people who too have bought and used such cheap services and even got breakthrough for visa approvals. Well in simple terms some people get lucky, because mostly visa officer is already convinced by either their strong travel history, or strong financials or simply official strong reasons to return to home country. In such cases, they sometimes don’t care to check the authenticity of such tickets. But, first time travelers can’t simply afford to take such risk!