Dubai Visa Extension and Overstay Fines for Indian Tourists

Last verified against GDRFA Dubai, ICP and u.ae service pages on 26 August 2026.

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Most Indian tourists who pay an overstay fine in Dubai never decided to overstay. They read the wrong date on their own visa, assumed a grace period that was abolished three years ago, or found out what an extension really costs only after the deadline to file one had passed.

The gap between handling this well and handling it badly is not small. Extending on time is a fixed cost and leaves nothing on your record. Missing the date by three weeks costs about the same money, leaves a violation on your immigration file, and — if you hold the five-year multiple-entry visa — forfeits an AED 3,000 deposit that most holders have forgotten they paid. The rules are not complicated. They are just published in places nobody reads until it is too late.

This article gives you the four governing numbers, a method for calculating your own last lawful day, the true cost of every option, and an ordered recovery sequence if the date has already passed. Every figure is attributed to the authority that publishes it. If you are still deciding which permit to travel on, the differences between the Dubai visa options open to Indian passport holders determine almost everything that follows.

The four numbers that govern your stay

• AED 50 per day. ICP’s service card for paying a visa or residence violation fine lists this as the penalty for expiry of the permitted stay period, charged per day, applied identically to entry visas, residence permits and exit permits.
• Day one is the day after your permitted stay ends. There is no free window first. Neither GDRFA Dubai nor ICP publishes any grace period for tourist or visit visas on their current service pages.
• You can extend without leaving the country. GDRFA Dubai’s tourist visa extension service is filed online, requires only a passport copy, and states a 48-hour turnaround.
• 120 days is the ceiling. GDRFA’s tourist visa extension card states the visa may be extended by decision of the issuing authority one or more times, not exceeding 120 days in total.

Those four facts settle most of the anxiety. The money is in the detail.

The two-date check: working out your last lawful day

Almost every accidental Indian overstay starts the same way. The traveller looks at the wrong date, and the date they look at is the one printed more prominently.

Your visa carries two clocks. They are not the same, and only one of them is your deadline.

Entry validity is the window in which you must arrive in the UAE. It is printed separately from your permitted stay, and it is usually the longer of the two numbers — which is precisely why it gets mistaken for the date that matters. It governs boarding a plane. It says nothing about how long you may stay.

Permitted stay is the clock that starts when you land. A 30-day visa gives you 30 days from your entry date. Not 30 days from the date the visa was issued. Not 30 days from the date at the top of the PDF your agent emailed.

Run the check in that order — arrival window first, then permitted stay from your actual entry date — and the confusion disappears.

A worked example. You receive a visa on 1 September and fly on 20 October. Count 20 October as day one. On a 30-day permit, your last full lawful day is 18 November, and the fine begins accruing on 19 November. The fine is charged per calendar day. Weekends and UAE public holidays are not excluded, and no notification is sent when it starts.

Verify it against the record, not your memory

Which portal you use depends on where the visa was issued, not where you are standing.

Dubai-issued visas — GDRFA Dubai. Use the file validity and fines enquiry services at gdrfad.gov.ae. You can search by passport number, by file number, or by Emirates ID. Searching by passport asks for your passport number, nationality and date of birth, plus a captcha. The result returns your file number, your unified number (the UID, which is a separate identifier from the file number), your current visa status, and the issue and expiry dates.

All other emirates — ICP. Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah run through ICP smart services at smartservices.icp.gov.ae, under Public Services and then File Validity. You select whether you are checking a residency or a visit visa, then enter your UID, file number, Emirates ID or passport number with your date of birth.

Querying the wrong authority returns nothing. Travellers routinely misread that empty result as “no fine”. It only means you asked the wrong department.

Five-year multiple-entry holders have an extra step, and GDRFA spells it out: to establish how many days remain, request a travel report showing your entry and exit movements, and check them against your permitted duration. Recollection is not a substitute, because the annual allowance is consumed across every visit in the year.

The grace period: what actually happened, and when

Search this topic today and you will find a wave of 2026 articles announcing that the UAE has “removed the 10-day grace period” for visit and tourist visas.

It was removed in 2023.

Khaleej Times reported it at the time: the 10-day buffer had survived only on visas issued in Dubai, every other emirate had already discontinued it, and Dubai withdrew it from 15 May that year. The paper checked with call centres at both ICP and GDRFA. Both confirmed that no grace period applied to visit visas issued anywhere in the UAE. A year later, in May 2024, the same paper was still reporting that Dubai travel agents were fighting the misconception, with one agency owner describing clients as being in denial about a buffer withdrawn the previous year.

Neither authority publishes a grace period for tourist visas on its current service pages. The federal fees and fines page on u.ae carries an update stamp of 11 February 2026 and states only that a fine applies to overstaying, directing readers to ICP and GDRFA to check their own record. It publishes no buffer and no tariff table.

This matters beyond pedantry. A reader who believes the change happened months ago will assume the rule is new, unevenly applied, and possibly negotiable. It is none of those. It has been settled policy for three years and the immigration system applies it automatically.

Plan on zero grace. If your permitted stay ends on the 18th, be airborne or extended by the 18th.

What an extension really costs

Nearly every article on this subject quotes AED 600 plus VAT. That figure is correct. It is also incomplete, and the omission is roughly the price of two nights in a mid-range Dubai hotel.

Here is the full structure exactly as GDRFA Dubai publishes it on the tourist visa extension service card:

Line item	Amount	When it applies
Visa extension fee	AED 600	Always
Value added tax at 5%	AED 30	Always
Knowledge Dirham	AED 10	Sponsored person inside the country
Innovation Dirham	AED 10	Sponsored person inside the country
Fee inside the country	AED 500	Sponsored person inside the country
Realistic total for a tourist already in the UAE	AED 1,150

The AED 500 inside-country fee is the line that disappears from most write-ups, and it nearly doubles the bill. It applies precisely because you are extending from within the UAE rather than applying from outside — which is the entire reason you are reading this. GDRFA adds a standing caveat that the total may vary with the individual’s circumstances, so treat AED 1,150 as the planning figure and the checkout screen as the real one.

Three further cost warnings.

Amer centres and typing offices are legitimate and often useful, particularly if your documents are awkward or your English is limited, but their service margin sits on top of the government fee. Filing through the portal yourself costs the government fee alone.

If your visa was issued outside Dubai, your fee schedule is ICP’s rather than GDRFA’s. Read it on the ICP service card. Do not assume the Dubai figure transfers, because the two authorities price services independently.

There is also a published fee conflict on the visa-on-arrival route, and you should know about it before you budget. The UAE’s own diplomatic missions publish the 14-day Indian visa on arrival at AED 100, renewable once at AED 250. GDRFA’s card for extending a visitor visa on arrival lists the same AED 600 plus VAT plus AED 500 inside-country structure as any other extension. Both are official UAE sources and they do not agree. We are not going to resolve that by picking the friendlier number. Budget for the higher figure, confirm the exact amount at the point of application, and keep the receipt.

Set against those totals, an extension is usually a smaller line in a Dubai budget than most travellers fear — and there are practical ways of keeping a Dubai trip affordable across the extra days once the sightseeing money has already gone. The larger cost is almost always the extra accommodation, and families should check the hotel occupancy rules for families in Dubai before assuming additional nights can simply be added to the room they are already in.

Who can extend, how often, and where the ceiling sits

Extension rights are not uniform. Three routes matter to Indian travellers and they behave differently.

	14-day visa on arrival	Prepaid 30 or 60-day tourist visa	5-year multiple-entry visa
Who holds it	Indian passport holders with a US visa or green card, or UK/EU residence, each valid at least six months	The standard package and independent traveller	Self-sponsored frequent visitors
Extendable	Yes	Yes	Yes
Extra time granted	A further 14 days	30 days per extension	A further 90 days
How many times	Once only	One or more, at the issuing authority’s decision	Subject to the annual cap
Published ceiling	28 days total	120 days total	90 days per visit, 180 days per year
Extra exposure on breach	Standard daily fine	Standard daily fine	Daily fine plus forfeiture of the security deposit

Work your own ceiling from that table rather than assuming. A 30-day visa extended once runs to 60 days and can go further, since the published limit is 120 days in total. A 60-day visa extended by 30 days reaches 90, with the same 120-day ceiling above it. Either way, the ceiling is a total, not an allowance per extension.

GDRFA’s visa-on-arrival service for Indian citizens is explicit that the 14-day entry visa may be extended for a similar period one time only. There is no second application. If you need more than 28 days and you entered on that route, you are not looking at an extension — you are looking at a fresh visa, which is a different process with different requirements.

The published ceilings differ between services because the services differ. The 120-day figure on the tourist visa card is the total permitted stay under that visa including every extension. The 180-day figure on the five-year visa is an annual allowance spread across all visits in a rolling year. Business and job-seeker visit visas carry their own, higher limits. Reading across from one service card to another is how travellers end up confidently wrong.

Two structural points worth knowing. GDRFA states that this class of tourist visa may only be issued by accredited tourism offices in the emirate — so if a tour operator sponsored your visa, they remain attached to your file, and involving them is usually faster than working around them.

The second point catches families out. Children are not covered by a parent’s permit: each child holds their own visa, accrues their own fine, and needs their own extension filed for them. The documents needed for a child’s Dubai visa should therefore be in order before you travel rather than assembled in a hurry mid-trip, and anyone planning Dubai with children should treat the extension deadline as a family-wide date rather than a personal one.

How to extend, step by step

Apply while your visa is still valid. An extension renews a live permit. It is not a remedy for an expired one.

1. Identify your issuing authority. Dubai-issued, use GDRFA. Any other emirate, use ICP. This is set by where the visa was issued, not where you happen to be.
2. File five to seven days before expiry. GDRFA states a 48-hour completion time, but that is a service estimate, not a guarantee. Applications get returned for correctable errors, and a returned application does not pause your clock.
3. Log in. GDRFA smart services at gdrfad.gov.ae, or ICP smart services — both accept UAE Pass. On GDRFA you start a new application and apply for yourself. On ICP the path runs through public visa services to extension of current visa.
4. Attach a passport copy. That is the only document GDRFA’s card lists for this service. If someone is asking you for substantially more, ask why.
5. Pay and keep the confirmation. You should receive SMS or email confirmation. Save it — it is your evidence of a live application if anything is queried later.
6. Or file in person. An Amer centre in Dubai will handle it during normal operating hours, at a service margin. Registered typing centres do the same across the other emirates.

If your application is refused while your visa is still valid, you still have days in hand. Fix the specific defect and resubmit if it was correctable, or move straight to booking your departure. Do not resubmit repeatedly and hope: ICP’s fine schedule includes an AED 2,000 penalty for misuse of smart services, which is not a risk worth running to save an AED 600 fee.

One route works differently. If you entered on the 14-day visa on arrival, your permit was issued at the airport rather than through a normal application, and the extension follows that. Gulf News, citing a Dubai travel agency supervisor, reported that on-arrival extensions can be applied for at the immigration counter of the airport where you landed, and through an Amer centre if the visa was issued at Dubai International. Ask at the counter before you leave the terminal if you already suspect 14 days will not be enough — it is far easier than reconstructing the paperwork a week later.

If you are travelling between service centres to sort this out, getting around on the Dubai Metro is considerably cheaper than a week of taxis spent shuttling between offices.

The five-year multiple-entry visa: a different kind of exposure

If you hold the five-year multiple-entry tourist visa, an overstay costs far more than AED 50 a day, and the reason sits in one line on the service card that almost nobody reads twice.

GDRFA publishes the total cost of this visa as AED 3,713.50: an AED 100 application fee, an AED 500 issuance fee, an AED 3,000 guarantee, an AED 21 warranty service fee, an AED 20 fee for collection and return of the guarantee, AED 10 each for the Knowledge and Innovation Dirhams, and an AED 52.50 service fee.

The AED 3,000 guarantee is a refundable security deposit. It is by far the largest component of what you paid, and you get it back when the visa runs its course cleanly.

Now the line that matters. Under additional information, GDRFA states that in case of a violation, the fines will be collected at the departure port and the financial security amount will be forfeited.

Work the arithmetic. A ten-day overstay on a standard tourist visa costs AED 500 in daily fines plus administrative charges. The same ten-day overstay on a five-year multiple-entry visa costs that, plus AED 3,000 you do not get back. At that point the daily fine is a rounding error against the deposit.

The conditions are printed on the card: no more than 90 continuous days in the country, extendable by a similar period, with total days in a year not exceeding 180. Because the allowance is annual and cumulative, a short third trip can breach it even though no individual visit looked long. Spacing visits sensibly across the year is the practical defence, and since which months suit a Dubai trip varies considerably for Indian travellers, the visits worth prioritising are rarely spread evenly. That is exactly why GDRFA tells five-year visa holders to pull a travel report rather than rely on memory.

The 23-day line: extend, fly home, or settle the fine

You have four responses available. Only one is cheapest, and which one depends entirely on how many days you are talking about.

Days beyond permitted stay	Daily fine accrued	Extension route (AED 1,150)	Which is cheaper
3 days	AED 150	Not available — extensions must be filed before expiry	Settle and fly
10 days	AED 500	Would have cost AED 1,150	Settling, if you had no reason to stay
23 days	AED 1,150	AED 1,150	Break-even
30 days	AED 1,500	AED 1,150	Extension — and you would have been legal throughout
30 days on a 5-year visa	AED 1,500 + AED 3,000 forfeited	AED 1,150	Extension, decisively

Divide the extension cost by the daily fine and the crossover lands at 23 days. Below that line, a settled overstay is arithmetically cheaper. Above it, the extension wins outright. Remember the number and you can re-run the decision yourself whenever the fee changes.

But arithmetic is not the whole decision, and treating it as one is how people talk themselves into a bad outcome.

An overstay is a record; an extension is not. The cheaper option below the 23-day line leaves a violation on your immigration file. The more expensive option leaves nothing at all. For anyone who intends to return to the UAE, or who may later apply for a UAE work visa, or whose future employer may apply on their behalf, that difference outlives the money.

The daily fine is also never the whole bill. ICP’s own fine payment card lists a smart services fee of AED 100 alongside the daily penalty. Gulf News, reporting a breakdown from a Dubai corporate services provider, listed the AED 50 daily rate alongside an e-services charge of AED 28 plus AED 1.40 VAT and ICP fees of AED 122. The same paper reported a visitor who overstayed by roughly eight days and paid around AED 1,000 on exit — well above the AED 400 the daily rate alone suggests.

Extending carries onward costs too. Thirty more days is thirty more nights of accommodation, and Dubai room rates swing hard by season, so choosing where to stay in Dubai for an extension period matters more to your total than the government fee does.

And rebooking is the forgotten fourth option. Before assuming you must extend, price a change to your return flight. Availability varies enormously by route — which Indian cities have direct flights to Dubai largely determines how much flexibility you actually have when you need to move a date at short notice, and a traveller with four daily non-stops home is in a very different position from one on a twice-weekly connection.

The decision rule. If you want the extra days, extend before expiry — at any length, every time. If you do not want the extra days and have already overrun, settle and leave immediately, because each further day buys you nothing. If you hold the five-year visa, extend regardless of where you sit against the 23-day line.

If you have already overstayed

Work through this in order. The sequence matters more than the speed.

1. Establish the real number today. Use GDRFA’s fines enquiry service for a Dubai-issued visa, or ICP smart services for any other emirate, with the identifiers described earlier. Do not accept an estimate from an agent, a relative or an online calculator. Only the official portal shows your actual balance.
2. Settle before you go to the airport, not at it. Payment channels include the ICP smart services portal, the GDRFA Dubai portal, the DubaiNow app, UAE Pass, authorised Amer centres, registered typing offices, and immigration counters at airports and land borders. That last channel exists, and it is the worst one. Clear the balance at least 48 hours ahead.
3. Understand what happens at departure. Outstanding amounts are held against your immigration file, and UAE airports run automated smart gates linked to that file. An unresolved balance surfaces at check-in or immigration rather than being quietly ignored, and it surfaces at the point in your journey where you have the least time and the fewest options. This is the whole argument for step two.
4. Check whether you need an exit permit. Gulf News, reporting on the fine structure, noted that where the violation period is under 30 days the fine can be settled at Dubai’s airports or at GDRFA’s main building. Longer overstays, and any case where your passport is lost, generally require an exit permit obtained in advance. ICP runs this service online and asks for a personal photograph, a passport copy, and your entry or residence visa. Clear your fines first — the permit follows settlement, not the other way round.
5. Budget for the administrative layer. The daily fine sits underneath smart services and processing charges. Assume the final figure is meaningfully higher than days multiplied by fifty.
6. Keep every receipt. ICP’s terms for the fine payment service state that the individual must either adjust their status or leave the UAE after paying any fines incurred. Proof of payment is what closes the file.
7. Do not go quiet. If your visa was sponsored, tell your sponsor now. If your passport is gone, go to your consulate now. The most expensive thing you can do at this stage is nothing, because an unresolved overstay eventually stops being an overstay and becomes an absconding case, which is a different and far costlier category.

If you cannot afford the fine

This is more common than the internet admits, and the honest answer has three parts.

The amount grows every day you wait, so delay is never the cheaper option — it is the only choice that is guaranteed to cost more. Your consulate can help you travel, but it cannot clear a UAE immigration penalty; those are separate processes running in parallel. And GDRFA’s stated public position is that people facing residency difficulties should contact the administration through its official channels to find a suitable solution, which is an invitation to raise the problem rather than hide from it.

If the overstay was caused by illness or hospitalisation, gather the medical documentation before approaching anyone. Check the UAE rules on carrying medicines before you fly home as well, because some prescriptions that are routine in India need paperwork to move through a UAE airport.

What actually follows an overstay — and what does not

Three consequences are real and documented.

The first is a departure hold. Outstanding fines are flagged in the immigration system, and until they are settled your departure can be blocked. This is the most common consequence and the easiest to resolve.

The second is a record on your file. The violation attaches to your immigration history and can surface when you, or a future sponsor, apply for anything else in the UAE.

The third is escalation into an absconding case, and this is the expensive one. Khaleej Times, quoting Dubai travel agency operators, reported that a visitor can have absconding status removed by paying a minimum of AED 2,000, and that the figure can reach AED 5,000 once additional charges payable to the authorities are included — separate from, and on top of, the overstay fine itself.

Now the part that needs correcting, because it circulates constantly among Indian travellers.

In June 2024, messages spread through travel agents and their clients claiming that Dubai immigration had announced that anyone overstaying more than five days would be “permanently absconded without prior notice”, blacklisted, barred from any future work visa, and deported with a lifetime ban. One version carried a Ministry of Interior logo.

GDRFA Dubai denied it. The authority’s call centre confirmed the posts had not been issued by GDRFA, and its media department gave Gulf News a statement urging the public not to follow rumours and to obtain information from official sources — and inviting anyone facing a residency problem to contact the administration through its official channels to find a suitable solution.

That last clause deserves a second reading. The authority’s own stated position is that residency problems are things to be resolved, not automatic triggers for permanent exclusion.

What is true is that consequences scale with duration and are decided case by case. Neither ICP nor GDRFA publishes a fixed tariff converting a number of overstay days into a number of ban years. Any website presenting such a table as official is presenting something the authorities do not publish. A short, promptly settled overstay is an administrative matter. A long, ignored one is not. Between those poles the outcome depends on your specific file, which is exactly why the recovery sequence above begins with establishing your real position rather than guessing at it.

It is worth understanding why the posture is this firm. Overstaying and absconding by visit visa holders is what drove authorities to tighten entry screening in the first place: Khaleej Times reported Indian travellers being asked at check-in and on arrival to show the equivalent of AED 3,000 in cash or on a card, a confirmed return ticket, and proof of where they would be staying — with some refused boarding at Indian airports for failing to produce them. Enforcement at the exit and enforcement at the entrance are the same policy viewed from two ends.

The same principle runs through most of safety and local rules in Dubai: enforcement is consistent and largely automated, and the penalties scale with how promptly you deal with them rather than with how sorry you are.

If a tour operator or a relative sponsored your visa

Most Indian tourists on a package do not hold a self-sponsored visa. It was issued by an accredited tourism office, which means somebody else’s file is attached to your compliance.

That has consequences on both sides. Khaleej Times reported that when a visitor stops reporting to the agency that facilitated their visa, the agency faces fines and operational penalties — travel agents quoted AED 2,500 payable per absconding case, along with a reduction in the agency’s visa quota, which limits how many future travellers they can bring in.

Two things follow, and travellers usually get both wrong.

Your operator has a real financial incentive to help you. An extension filed on time is far cheaper for them than an absconding case. Calling them early is not an admission of fault — it is the outcome they actively want.

Their exposure does not cancel yours. The daily fine attaches to you and is collected from you at departure. The agency’s penalty is a separate matter on a separate file. Nobody is quietly absorbing your fine on your behalf.

Tell your sponsor as soon as your dates start slipping, not after your visa has expired. This is worth raising before you book, too. Whether you are comparing Dubai tour packages from Mumbai or planning a Dubai trip from Delhi, a reputable operator should be able to tell you in advance how a date change would be handled and what it would cost. There is a version of this conversation that ends in a filed extension and a version that ends in an absconding report, and the difference between them is usually a few days of silence.

Amnesties and waivers: the current position

Two different things get called an amnesty, and confusing them is expensive.

A general amnesty is a limited-window programme, announced by the federal authority, under which people in irregular status can regularise or leave with penalties waived. The UAE runs these periodically. During the two-month programme that opened on 1 September 2024, the Consulate General of India in Dubai reported handling more than 4,000 service seekers, issuing close to 900 Emergency Certificates for people leaving and around 600 short-validity passports for those regularising their status.

A targeted waiver is narrower. In March 2026, ICP waived overstay fines for tourists, visit visa holders and exit permit holders who could not depart because of regional airspace disruption and the flight cancellations that began on 28 February. Fines were suppressed automatically for qualifying travellers rather than requiring an application. Standard fines resumed from 21 April 2026, and Khaleej Times reported a final deadline of 9 July 2026 for beneficiaries to complete their immigration procedures. Both dates have now passed.

As things stand, no general amnesty is open. Standard fines apply.

Two practical points. Waivers are announced by ICP or GDRFA, not by travel agents, so verify any claim of relief through an official channel before acting on it. And relief of this kind attaches to specific extraordinary circumstances — an airspace closure, a pandemic — rather than to individual bad luck. Waiting for an amnesty is not a plan.

Consular help for Indian nationals

If your passport has been lost or stolen, or your position has deteriorated to the point where you cannot travel on your own documents, the Consulate General of India in Dubai and the Embassy of India in Abu Dhabi are the right places to go.

The consulate issues an Emergency Certificate, a one-way travel document for Indian nationals who hold no valid travel document or are in irregular status in the UAE and need to return to India. It requires a completed application, passport photographs, and documentation establishing your identity and Indian citizenship — your previous passport if you have it, or an alternative photo identity document if you do not.

Be clear about the limits. An Emergency Certificate solves the travel document problem. It does not clear UAE immigration fines and it does not lift a departure hold. The consular route and the immigration route run in parallel, and you will need to complete both.

Helpline numbers, counter timings and the current application form are published on the consulate’s own website at cgidubai.gov.in. Check there rather than relying on a number circulated second-hand, because arrangements change between amnesty periods and ordinary operations.

Getting the trip length right in the first place

Every option above costs more than the one you never needed. Most Indian overstays trace back to a trip planned optimistically, with a visa duration chosen against a budget rather than against an itinerary.

Three habits reduce the risk to near zero.

Choose the permitted stay against a real itinerary. A well-paced trip covering Downtown, Old Dubai, the desert and a theme park day does not compress neatly, and building from a day-by-day Dubai itinerary will show you quickly whether the visa you are about to buy actually fits the holiday you are about to take.

Understand fixed return dates before you book. Packaged departures are built around a fixed return, and that return date is what your visa is issued against. This is normal and usually cheaper, but it puts the flexibility to extend with the operator rather than with you.

Families need a wider margin. Travelling with children means slower days, more rest stops, and a far higher chance of a schedule slipping — and because the fine is charged per person, a family of four that overruns by ten days faces four separate penalties rather than one. Build in buffer days rather than assuming the plan will hold. If you would rather not manage the visa timeline yourself at all, structured Dubai family tour packages put the sponsorship and the exit date in the same pair of hands.

Before you fly

• Photograph the visa PDF and save it offline
• Note the permitted stay in days, and the entry validity separately — run the two-date check before you pack
• Set a phone reminder for seven days before your permitted stay ends
• Save your sponsor’s contact details somewhere other than email

While you are there

• Calculate your last lawful day from your arrival date, on day one
• Check your file on the correct portal once, mid-trip
• If plans slip, act while the visa is still live
• Before departure, confirm nothing is outstanding — and check the duty-free allowance coming back from Dubai so your last morning is spent at the gate rather than at a customs desk

Frequently asked questions