Domestic Flights in China on a Foreign Passport
Foreigners can book and board any domestic flight in China on a passport. There is no separate permit to apply for, no Chinese ID needed and no route you are excluded from. What decides whether the trip goes smoothly is that your passport number is in the booking and that you carry the same physical passport to the airport.
Book with your passport number, not a Chinese ID
Under CAAC screening rules, the accepted boarding documents for a foreign passenger are a passport, a diplomatic personnel certificate issued by the Foreign Ministry, or a Foreign Permanent Resident ID Card. Airline systems have required complete passport data in the passenger record — number, country of issue, nationality — since the real-name verification upgrade for foreign passengers on 11 April 2023. Enter your name exactly as it appears in the passport's machine-readable zone, middle names included. The document used at booking must be the one you present at check-in and security.
Pay in a way the checkout accepts
You can book on an airline's website, app or WeChat mini-program, on an international booking platform, or at an airport counter. Chinese-facing checkouts — the Chinese Ctrip app, Fliggy, most airline mini-programs — typically take UnionPay, WeChat Pay or Alipay funded from a Chinese bank account, and travellers report foreign Visa and Mastercard payments failing there. International checkout pages accept foreign cards. Airport counters take RMB cash, WeChat Pay, Alipay or bank cards depending on the airline.
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Check in at the staffed counter
Bring the physical passport; a photo or screenshot is not accepted. Cut-offs differ by airport: Xiamen Air opens domestic check-in 90 minutes before departure and closes it 30 minutes before, while Wenzhou airport publishes a 35-minute cutoff. Baiyun Airport's newer T3 has 60 self-service machines that read passports, but plenty of kiosks and face-scan gates are built around the Chinese ID card chip — Fuzhou's new T2 machines register a face by swiping a second-generation ID card. If a machine rejects your passport, walk to the staffed counter and use the manual lane at security and boarding.
Baggage
On China Southern, economy includes 20 kg of checked baggage, business class 30 kg and first class 40 kg. Excess is charged per kilo at 1.5% of the published one-way adult economy fare on the day you pay it. Low-cost carriers may include no checked bag at all, so read the fare rules before paying.
Changes and refunds
Both can be handled through the platform or airline you booked with, or at the airport. Fees depend on your fare rules, not on your nationality.
Last checked: 2026-09-24
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