Expat Life in Saudi Arabia

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After announcement of resumption of the international flights from Saudi Arabia to some part of the world, expats are planning to travel back to their home countries, well in this post we will give you complete procedure for how to plan your next trip to your home or any other country from Saudi Arabia, we will also cover some help if your parent or family will be travelling alone and need assistance to navigate and do the on boarding process easily.

Visit Visa Holder Traveling Alone from Saudi Arabia to Home country:

First thing first, make sure that you are traveling before the expiry of your visit visa, consider traveling 15 days before your visa expiry, as there is a possibility that airline could shift your traveling dates as per their policy. It happened to us two times in a row. Welcome to post covid 19 world.

Pro Tip:

Confirm your travel date and purchase the ticket first, make sure to go with Economy-Flex or Business flex option, as it will let you change your travel date without any fee/charge and also you have flexibility to change it later according to your needs. In our instance, the airline changed our travel date and the date they changed to, was not suitable for us, so we changed it back to a date suitable to us without incurring any charges since we had flex version of the ticket.

Now check your country’s travel guide, we will present traveling back to Pakistan as an example, similar steps will be applied to other countries as well.

Please follow below check list and tips to make your travel as smooth as possible:

1. Ticket is confirmed, note down timings and dates, if your airline give you option to choose your seat do it, and go through whole process to lock it, since there is a chance that any desperate passenger in need, may reserve your seat through airline and airline may change your flight date as per their policy. We want to help the desperate passenger but we also want to make our trip smooth.
2. Book an appointment using sahaty app for visit visa corona test ( try to logout if you are already logged in to make this option visible) , it will give you option to register with border id. If you are not able to register or dates are not suitable or you want a different health provider no issues, just visit your local health center which do PCR test ( Corona Test ) , Almost all of them do corona test ( we had adopted this option ).
3. It is required for you to have PCR (corona test) as Negative and should not be older than 72 hours, Meaning that you should go for PCR test at max three days before your traveling date ( you can go before 2 days or 1 day, but make sure that hard copy of the report will be available before your flight), if you did your corona test 4 days before that will not be acceptable while doing check in process at airport. Pro Tip: if you are traveling on Saturday make sure you do you corona test before three days ( covering 72 hours window to travel on your flight ) and get the report ready before time, as on Friday the hard copy of corona test may not be available in some health providers, so confirm everything with hospital to avoid delays or any un expected results.
4. Take the visit visa holder’s passport with you and also make sure to get the border number from your MOI portal, as some times the hand written border number on visa page on your passport is not correct ( it was not correct in our case so we had to take screen shot from the MOI to tell them to update in the data entry while opening the receipt in hospital )
5. Open a receipt in your health provider/hospital and make sure the border number and passport number is correct while data is entered by the operator in hospital, it cost us 350 SAR for this PCR test. ( It takes almost 10 mins to do all of this process ) Pro Tip: If corona test center which is usually a container with in the vicinity of the hospital is not available/opened, go to the emergency center of the hospital, they can do the corona test and make sure to tell them you are doing this test because you are traveling on specific date. they will be able to guide you more if you are doing the test before or it will be valid during your flight time.
6. Once test is done, make sure to ask for hard copy of the report, how and when you can get it from hospital, usually it will be available within 24 hours of test taken, some facilities provide you within 4 hours and may require more money to do it.
7. Receive your report and now enter your information in Pass Track App ( Applied to Pakistan only).
8. Download Pass Track App in any mobile phone, enter the information about who is traveling along with flight details, make sure to enter correct flight information, it is available in your ticket reference, also you need to upload the PCR test result, you can capture the photo of the PCR report and submit, They will give you the Tracking number, Take the screen shot of the tracking number screen and print it in case traveling person will not have this on his/her mobile. This print out you need to show it on the air line’s check in counter along with PCR test hard copy.
9. Make sure that you are (and/or Passenger) wearing high quality Mask, we suggest to have N95 or any good quality mask, see the link below to order it from Amazon.sa, you need to be extra vigilant as a lot of people are traveling with you here from Saudi Arabia to your home country and you will be exposed to a lot of people in your home country while traveling to your destination, so that’s why, it is recommended to wear good quality mask, since we want to protect us and our family and other fellow passengers, we suggest to wear Fine Guard Mask as in the following link :
10. Fine Guard Comfort Adult Face Mask With Livinguard Technology – Large
11. Adidas Face Cover Large, Black (3-Pack)
12. Pro tip: If one of your parent is traveling alone and they need assistance navigating the airport and need help in boarding the airplane and other things, you can request the assistant from the Airline counter while doing the check in for your parent. They can provide you the assistant who will have wheelchair and will take care of things like taking through security inspection, sitting and waiting in lounge and then boarding on the plane. It is better to ask assistant his mobile number so that you can take the updates from him about the on boarding. ( We went through this option and experience was great in Saudi Arabia and also in Pakistan )

We wish you a very happy and safe Trip to your Home.

For Iqama holder, you need to do the same if you have not received your second dose of corona vaccine, for more information check the travel guide of the airline.

• Fine Guard Comfort Adult Face Mask With Livinguard Technology – Large
• Adidas Face Cover Large, Black (3-Pack)

Disclaimer: The information provided in this post may not be accurate, as the traveling guideline always change depending on the circumstances. Please see the traveling guide of your Airline for more information.