Self-Help · Travel Planner

Know the Visa BeforeYou Book the Ticket.

A crew change fails at the visa far more often than it fails at the fare. Pick the nationality, the route and the role, and you get the requirements, the lead time and a checklist you can download and send to the manning agent.

Rule set dated 2 September 2026. Read from government, consulate and carrier sources — each answer shows you which ones.

Why This Page Exists

The Missing Link Is Almost Never the Seat

Early planning is what makes a crew change work. A visa started three weeks out is routine; the same visa started three days out is a vessel waiting at the berth. This page exists so a crew manager can see the requirement at the moment the rotation is planned, rather than the week it happens.

01

Plan the rotation, check the visa

Look up the combination as soon as the relief is named, not once the ticket is priced. Nothing here needs a login and nothing is stored.

02

Send the checklist to the agent

The PDF is written to be forwarded — to the manning agent, the seafarer, or the port agent — so everyone is working from the same list.

03

Confirm before anyone flies

We keep this current and our agents tell us when a port changes its practice. Rules still move, so check IATA Travel Centre and your port agent before travel.

Visa Self-Help

Build the Checklist

Twenty seafarer nationalities, fifty countries where crew changes happen, and the three roles that travel differently. Change any field and the answer updates as you go — and every answer carries the source it came from.

33destination rule sets
13nationality overrides
59official sources cited
20nationalities
  • Confirmed 4 Every line carried on the official source shown with the answer.
  • Partly confirmed 33 The mechanism is official; where a processing time or a nationality line is not published, the page says so.
  • Not verified 9 We could not find a current official source. The structure is there and the gap is named rather than filled with a guess.

Nothing you select here is sent anywhere. The checklist is generated in your own browser and downloaded straight to your machine.

What You Can Actually Cite

The Four Instruments Behind Every Crew Change

When a port officer or an airline supervisor says no, the argument is won by naming the instrument, not by insisting. These are the four that decide most seafarer travel — what each one gives you, and where each one stops.

IMO FAL Convention

Shore leave without a visa

The Facilitation Convention’s Standard 3.44 requires public authorities to allow crew ashore while the ship is in port once arrival formalities are done, and Standard 3.45 states plainly that crew members shall not be required to hold a visa for the purpose of shore leave. Since 1 January 2018 shore leave must be granted without discrimination by nationality, race, colour, sex, religion, political opinion or social origin, and irrespective of the flag of the ship.

Where it stopsIt covers shore leave from a ship already in port. It is not a right to fly into a country to join one — that is the distinction that catches crew managers out.

IMO — FAL Convention shore leave provisions ↗

ILO 108 and 185

The seafarers’ identity document

Convention 108 of 1958 created the seafarers’ identity document; Convention 185 of 2003 revised it into the biometric SID, designed so that a seafarer can travel to join his ship and go ashore. Which document a seafarer carries decides real outcomes: Brazil stopped accepting the 108 document in May 2023, and the United Kingdom’s crew concession turns on holding a book issued under one of the two.

Where it stopsRatification is per country and it changes. Check the seafarer’s own document against the destination’s position rather than assuming the convention travels with him.

ILO NORMLEX — Convention 185 ratifications ↗

EU

What the Schengen crew exemption does not cover

Civilian sea crew are visa-exempt under the EU rules only in the performance of their duties. Going ashore, or transiting to embark or disembark, is not treated as performance of duties — so a visa, or the Visa Code Article 36 seafarer visa issued at the border, is generally still needed. That border visa is for the genuinely unforeseen case: it runs a maximum of fifteen days and the conditions are narrow.

Where it stopsMember states add their own limits on top — maximum stays, nationality restrictions and advance crew-list notice. Plan on the consular visa and treat the border route as the exception it is.

EU Visa Code (Regulation 810/2009), Article 36 and Annex IX ↗

OK-to-board

The check that is not a visa at all

OK-to-board is an airline verification, not an immigration one: a message in the booking confirming the carrier has checked the seafarer’s documents before it will issue a boarding pass. Qatar Airways publishes what its staff ask a seaman for at check-in — passport, seaman’s book, letter of guarantee, and the visa, a pre-arranged visa confirmation, or the OK-to-board message. It is normally the agent or manning company that gets it in place.

Where it stopsIt is industry practice rather than a published international rule, it takes hours rather than minutes, and it is where most crew changes actually fail. The airline can still refuse carriage if the documents do not look right.

Qatar Airways Trade Portal — OK-to-board guidelines ↗

What We Actually Do

The Visa Desk Behind the Page

This reference is the free half. The other half is the desk that files the applications, chases the consulates and gets the OK-to-board in place before the seafarer leaves for the airport.

Start the visa, not the argument

Send Us the Rotation. We Will Send Back the Paperwork.

Give us the vessel, the ports and the nationalities and our visa desk comes back with what has to be filed, by when, and who files it. marine@traveego.com

Talk to the Visa DeskIATA Travel Centre