An immigration officer rarely has more than a few seconds to glance at proof of onward travel. Under the Schengen Borders Code, that proof is one of the specific entry conditions officers are told to check. A dummy ticket, also called an onward ticket, a real PNR booked for visa or border-check purposes without paying for the flight, looks almost identical to a fully paid one at a glance. The two only pull apart once someone checks past the surface.

Step 1: Check whether it's ticketed or only reserved

The first split isn't visible on the confirmation email. It's in the back-end status. A booking that's only reserved has a PNR (a record locator, the six-character code) but no ticket number attached to it. A booking that's ticketed has both. Under IATA's ticketing rules, a ticket number is what makes a reservation financially binding on the airline; a PNR alone isn't. A dummy ticket is almost always a reservation held just long enough to print or screenshot, never converted to a ticket. A real paid ticket has gone through that conversion. If you can see a ticket number field on your confirmation and it's populated, you're holding the paid version.

Step 2: Check whether the airline's own system can find it

This is the check that actually happens at a check-in desk or a consulate window, not the one that happens on paper. Punch the booking reference and the passenger's last name into the airline's own manage-booking tool. British Airways, like most full-service carriers, will pull up a ticketed itinerary in full: seat assignment options, baggage allowance, the works. A reservation-only PNR sometimes still resolves in the airline's system for a short window, then stops resolving once it lapses. If the lookup comes back empty at the moment someone else tries it, that's the tell, not the document itself. This is also the exact failure mode behind bookings that seemed to verify one day and did not verify on the airline's site the next.

Step 3: Check the fare basis and how long the hold lasts

Every fare has a fare basis code that governs how long an unticketed reservation can sit before the airline cancels it automatically. The exact window varies by carrier and route, so treat any number you're quoted as provisional rather than fixed. What's consistent is the shape of it: a reservation-only hold is measured in hours to a few days, not weeks. A ticketed fare, paid or not, is governed by different rules entirely, usually tied to refund and change conditions rather than an automatic expiry clock. Ask which one you're looking at before you assume either.

Step 4: Check what the person looking at it is actually verifying against

A consulate officer processing a visa application is checking your onward proof against the dates on the visa itself: does the ticket leave before the permitted stay runs out. A border officer at arrival is checking it against a broader standard, in Schengen states that standard traces back to the Schengen Borders Code's entry conditions for third-country nationals, which include evidence of the means and intention to leave. An airline agent at check-in is checking something narrower still: whether the destination country will let the airline land you without an onward or return document, since airlines carry the liability for that call. Three different checks, three different thresholds. A document that satisfies one doesn't automatically satisfy the others.

Step 5: Check that the dates actually match what's required

This is where a technically valid ticket still causes a problem. A visa sticker or entry stamp usually carries an implicit or explicit departure window, and an onward ticket dated after that window doesn't help even if every other check passes. The reverse trips people up too: booking a round-trip return to the home country when the requirement was only ever onward travel out of the current one, which can raise its own questions about intent if the dates don't line up with a stated itinerary. Match the ticket to the specific requirement in front of you, not to a generic template, since a Schengen short-stay window and a single-entry tourist visa window are rarely the same number of days.

Step 6: Check what happens to each one after the moment passes

A real paid ticket gets used, refunded under its fare rules, or changed. It has a financial life after the check that produced it. A dummy ticket typically doesn't. Once the visa is stamped or the boarding pass is issued, the reservation behind it is usually released or cancelled, because it was never converted to a ticket and never cost the traveller anything to let go. Neither outcome is inherently a problem. The difference matters mainly if you're asked to show the same proof twice, once at application and again at the airport weeks later, because a reservation that lapsed in between won't still be there.

Step 7: Check how to make either version hold up under scrutiny

Buy from a provider that actually issues a real PNR you can look up independently on the airline's own site, not a static image. Run the lookup yourself before you travel, not after someone asks. Keep the confirmation as a document, not just a photo of a screen, since a document carries the booking reference and passenger name together. And build in a buffer: if your onward proof is timed to expire the same week you might need it again, treat that as the actual risk, not the ticket type itself. It usually isn't. A checkable booking that's slightly inconvenient to renew beats an unverifiable one that looks perfect.

Further reading: our breakdown of what carriers actually verify between a dummy ticket and a real ticket goes deeper into the check-in side of this, and if your booking has already failed a lookup, see what to do when an onward ticket won't verify on the airline's site.

Sources: Schengen Borders Code entry conditions (European Commission), IATA Timatic.

If you'd rather not run this checklist yourself, book a verifiable onward ticket and skip straight to step seven.