UAE amends travel guideline, people with one name on passport can now travel to country

Agencies

New Delhi, 25 Nov 2022: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday amended its travel guidelines which mandated passengers entering the country to fill in their full names on their passports. On Thursday, the Consulate General of India, Dubai tweeted that passengers with only one name will be granted entry if they have their father/family’s name mentioned on the second page of their passports.

 

The amended rule also says passengers with only one name will be eligible for visa on arrival (VoA) if they have their father’s name or family name on the second page.

 

“Visa issued with more than one name-passenger has father’s/family name mentioned in the 2nd page is accepted. Passenger eligible for VOA if the father’s/family name mentioned on the 2nd page is accepted,” the Consulate General of India, Dubai, tweeted.

 

According to the rule that came into effect on Monday (November 21), which has now been amended, passengers with visiting visas or visas on arrival were to clearly declare both their first and last names on their passports. The country had said any passport holder with a single-word name — either in the ‘given name’ or ‘surname’ column of their passport — would be considered an ‘inadmissible passenger’ (INAD) and would not be granted entry into the country by immigration officers. The rule, however, was not applicable to UAE resident card holders and people with employment visas.

 

The rule had created panic among many passengers. As per media reports, some travellers with only one name on their passports were being barred from flying into the UAE.

 

To implement the new rule, the UAE government had depended on the convention of writing the name cited by part 3.4 of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) which states that ‘name of the holder is generally represented in two parts; the primary identifier and the secondary identifier.’