Spain visa
Flight reservation for a Spain visa.
The consulate asks you not to buy the ticket.
What the Spanish checklist says.
Read at the source and copied, not paraphrased.
“Flight reservation (please do not buy the tickets until your visa has been granted).”
The document is named as a reservation. The instruction after it is not advice about saving money, it is the consulate telling applicants that a purchased ticket buys nothing at this stage of the application.
The order to do things in.
Two of these are commonly done in the wrong order.
- 01
Book the appointment
The date it falls on is what every other date on this page is measured from.
- 02
Order the reservation
Close to the appointment, not months before it. A held booking expires on the airline's clock.
- 03
Hand in the file
The reservation should still be live on the day, so an assessor who checks it finds it.
- 04
Buy the ticket after the decision
Which is the point the consulate is making. Until then there is nothing to gain by paying.
The trade sits between the second and third step. A reservation that is real enough to be looked up is a booking held at an airline, and airlines do not hold seats indefinitely. The deadline can be as short as 48 hours and it is the airline that sets it, not us. So a reservation ordered early enough to feel safe is a reservation that can lapse before the appointment, and one ordered the night before is fine.
Check it on the airline’s own website once it arrives. If it comes back, it will come back for the person assessing your file too.
Which document to take.
Spain names the reservation, so the wording is not ambiguous.
A line asking for a flight reservation is asking for something that exists at an airline. That is the verifiable flight reservation. Real seats on real flights, the airline’s own booking reference on the document, and no fare paid.
The flight itinerary is the other document, and it answers a different line. It sets out real scheduled flights and holds nothing with an airline, which it states on its face. Where a checklist asks to see your travel plans rather than a reservation, that is the one it is asking for. The four words that get used for these documents covers the difference properly.
Nothing here guarantees visa approval, entry, or acceptance by an embassy, airline or border authority. Requirements are set by the authority assessing your application and can change, so check yours with them directly. Read the product disclaimer.
What goes wrong.
All four are about timing.
Buying the ticket before the decision
The consulate asks you in writing not to. If the application is refused or delayed, recovering the fare is the airline's decision and often it is not possible.
Ordering the reservation months in advance
The opposite error, and less obvious. A held booking runs to a deadline the airline sets. Ordered too early it can expire before the appointment it was meant for.
A one way when the checklist asks for a return
Most Schengen checklists ask for a round trip. A reservation that only goes out leaves the return unanswered.
Expecting the reservation to cover a refused visa
No document is a guarantee of approval, and none of ours is sold as one. What a reservation does is answer the line on the checklist that asks for one.
Questions people ask first.
The full terms are on the refund policy and the product disclaimer.
Start with a route.
Everything else follows from it.