First—According to SXM officials, you are only supposed to be able to do the form 7 days in advance. This is not true. I did mine two weeks in advance.
Second—All applications are supposed to be individual applications, unless you are an organized tour group. Others here have reported that they did the group application successfully. I did two individual applications.
Third—Plan on wasting about 15-20 minutes of your time filling out the first form, about 10 minutes for the second.
Fourth—You need your passport number, date of issue and expiration and your flight numbers and date of arrival and departure.
Fifth—The calendar is Monday to Sunday, not Sunday to Saturday.
Sixth—Dates are to be inputted in the European manner, with day, then month, etc.
Seventh—IT IS ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT IN THE CORRECT DATE, AS IT WILL ALWAYS DEFAULT TO THE DAY BEFORE. By the time I finished the second form I was able to know to just click on the next day, to get the correct day.
Eighth—For the YEAR, there is a drop down box. Click on the year drop down box and go to the correct year, and then go to the month and date. (And, click on the day AFTER the date you want.!)
Ninth—For phone numbers, you need to use the international form. All phone numbers start with +1 and then the number.
Tenth—I did not know it, but I am flying on AMERCAN. No “I”. And I’m on “flgth” 956. Amazing. How long has this thing been online?
Eleventh--Your confirmation email will almost certainly go to junk mail. Retrieve it and then there is a link within the email to print out your actual confirmation, if you want to do so. I had to print mine out twice, as the first time I printed it, it only printed out my passport number and date of birth and not the SXM confirmation number. Allegedly, you don't have to print out anything, or keep a copy of the email, but I like to have printed confirmation of things.
So—we shall see whether we get to stand in line for an hour upon arrival. At least at the end, we will be in paradise!!
When we visited at the end of march we were on our way to Divi in less than an hour. This included getting our rental car. The airport has definitely stepped up its game. How long will be determined by Mother Nature and St Maarten
I would agree with what you have stated. Once you do one, it does become easier, but the format is not at all user friendly. Why would this not surprise me when it comes to SXM, specifically dealing with anything to do with the airport. My email did not go to junk, but it appears many do. The date thing was challenging until you catch on.
For sure, user friendly it is NOT. The date thing in particular is just stupid. They have to know that it doesn't work right?? Both Eric's and my email went to spam.
Thanks for the detailed explanation Carol. I filled ours out a couple months ago and came across all the anomalies you mentioned. The date was particularly difficult to figure out what I was doing wrong. I'm hoping I'm printing out the right form. I'm thinking it's what comes up when you hit "View Registration" although that information doesn't carry any name just passport number. I read here someone indicated when they arrived SXM didn't have a designated line for those who had completed the registration when they arrived. Everyone went to one line. I think they indicated that several planes had landed and the crowd was heavy. We'll see.
Ours went to our regular inbox. Once you get to a kiosk it goes very fast as long as you press the passport down firmly with your hand as it takes your picture. The slow down are the people struggling to input all the information at the kiosk instead of doing it online prior.
Go back to the plain paper form and they can throw them in a box or do the data entry themselves.
Meaningless bureaucracy technology, unless they are hunting for an international criminal who told them the right lodging address and date of departure.
What so many seem to be losing sight of is that this process not only takes the place of the paper form, but it also takes the place of the face-to-face with an immigration officer. When it works properly, as it did for us this past November, it speeds the process up dramatically. Many international destinations are transitioning to this type of immigration process, and I'm all for it.
GaKaye - Completely agree it speeds up the process, if only everyone would do their entry form in advance. When we return to Toronto which is the busiest airport in Canada we just scan our Nexus card, and get our picture taken and a piece of paper we just hand it to an immigration officer and off to luggage. No passport required, it stays in my pocket.
Lancer--yes, NO name on that print out, but there is passport number, date of birth and the SXM number. Seriously, they can't put the name on there?? Whatever.
Georgia--That's not the issue. The issue is that the website is totally NOT user friendly and has STUPID errors in it, how many months since it was first instituted??
Filling out the form on the plane takes up dead time and we have never found waiting for the immigration guy to be that big a deal. Even when we first off the plane and first thru the desk we have had to stand at the carousel waiting for a bag - the long pole in the tent.
I didn’t like the covid hastle or this one which we will have to do soon enough.
I like to pack my bag, remember the passport and get on the plane.
What's interesting is that we didn't have any issues filling out the entry form last November. No problem with the date. Apparently whatever they did to fix one issue broke another. The only thing that I encountered was that our city wasn't included in drop down list and I couldn't enter it. Not surprising, since we live in the middle of nowhere. Our county was listed, so I just chose that. I'm still in favor of the system. TJ, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Filling out the form on the plane doesn't accomplish the same thing that the electronic entry accomplishes.
Personally, and as I encountered in late Feb., is the inconsistency with the lack of a kiosk for people who have filled out the form. It seems some days there is a dedicated kiosk and other days, it is a free-for-all and the kiosks are all tied up with people filling it out upon arrival.
Georgia--somehow, that doesn't surprise me, that whatever they fixed, it broke something else. I was surprised that both the tiny town where I was born and the even tinier town I live in now, were both listed.
Carol I know your post is about the form and I agree with you. My larger issue,which is shared by most here,is waiting in line while people fill out the form at the airport. It would make sense to have the airline list the requirements and a link for every ticket sold to sxm. We have been twice since the new process and wouldn’t have known to pre register without the information flowing on this site. Just my two cents.
Whale tail- we fly AA which has some of the most flights and there is no obvious message regarding entry, let alone a requirement to register. I wish all airlines worked like AT.
bob--agreed, I cannot understand why they cannot consistently have a line just for those who have pre-filled their forms. Some report they do and some report they don't. Makes no sense. As far as airlines requiring it, or putting up info about it, the problem is that the SXM government does not have a consistent message on this. I think the 'official' word is still that it is not required.
As for the concept of why they went to this system to begin with, my wholly unsupported suspicion is that when we were filling out those paper forms, they never did anything with them, as they didn't have the manpower to put the information into a computer. I believe there was a while there that they stopped handing out the paper forms at all, before this whole electronic thing? Plus, if the system WORKS, it does require less people for immigration.
Carol - I think the "official" word from the SXM Government is that the form is mandatory to fill out the form prior to traveling. The first screenshot is from AirTransat app for our next trip in the documents required section. The other screenshot is from SXM Government link on the AirTransat app.
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