How can I travel to Jamaica without going through the USA, UK, or Canada?

Question

How can I fly to Jamaica without transiting in the UK, USA, Canada, or any other non-European countries? I am a Jamaican living in Sweden, and I don't have Swedish citizenship. I don't want to book a visa for the USA, because I applied before for a transit visa for Canada and they turned me down, so I don't want to do a transit visa again because I lost all my money in booking the flight before doing the visa, because they require people to book the flight tickets first.

Answer 1

There are multiple options from Montego Bay to Europe. Below is an example to Frankfurt. You need a separate flight from Frankfurt to wherever in Sweden you want to go but since they are both Schengen countries that should be no problem.

Answer 2

Per FlightConnections, there are direct flights from various EU/Schengen airports including Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Zurich, Milan and Verona (!?) to Montego Bay, Jamaica.

However, these all appear to be chartered holiday flights intended for package tours that are mostly seasonal (EU winter), operate on sparse schedules (once a week or less), and likely cannot be booked with connecting flights, so you'll need to fly yourself to the starting point separately.

Answer 3

Takes some determination to find a solution to a problem like this. Using Rome2Rio one option I found is ARN→ADD→GRU→PTY→MBJ (Sweden, Ethiopia, Brazil, Jamaica).  But don't believe Rome2Rio on times and prices—verify them with some other source.

Another very flexible tool is Azuon, but it also requires trying different locations.

Another more general question has answers showing two different ways to search for such a route.

Answer 4

As a concrete solution, the search engine I would recommend is Kiwi.com. It has a specific "exclude countries" option, which is exactly what you are looking for. It also allows you to customize your search in a lot of other ways: you can search flights to or from several cities at once (or even entire countries), include baggage, filter by specific arrival and departure time (not just day), etc.

Trying it on random dates a couple of months from now, the vast majority of the options it suggests (excluding Canada, UK and USA) seem to go via Amsterdam (with a technical stop in Cancún on the way back). In fact, re-doing the search with these countries included does not even find any cheaper tickets...

However, beware that these are all "self-transfers", on two separate tickets: if your first flight is delayed and you miss the second flight, your second ticket will be just lost. So allow plenty of time for the layover. At least 3 hours I would say, maybe even overnight if you want to be extra safe.

Answer 5

OPTION ONE: Sweden is in the Schengen Zone, so this should work, you can book it as a multi-city in a booking tool like skyscanner, but you'll probably have less issues if you book it through a good travel agent so that it's one itinerary. ARN (Stockholm) -> AMS (Amsterdam) possible layover in MAD (Madrid) -> PTY (Panama City) -> KIN (Kingston. Note that the available dates of these routes will increase/decrease seasonally. I assume you have a valid EU visa since you're currently in Sweden, so for that reason you should be fine in Panama:

Article 1: "Any person of nationality who requires a visa to enter the Republic of Panama, who has a valid Visa or Residence, duly issued by Canada, the United States of America, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Republic of Korea, the State of Japan, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Republic of Singapore and any of the States that make up the European Union, may enter the national territory " (https://www.embassyofpanama.org/visas-1)

OPTION TWO: I look at a lot of routes and it is remarkable that virtually all of the flights departing Kingston ultimately pass through US, Canada, or the UK.

I don't know too many specifics about your situation, but looking at this tool on the UK gov website, i think you might qualify for visa free transit through a UK airport on the basis of one or more of these conditions: https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa/y/jamaica/transit/somewhere_else/no

You do not need a Direct Airside Transit visa if you have one of the following:

• A common format residence permit issued by an European Economic Area (EEA) country or Switzerland
• A flight ticket from the Schengen area, if you can prove that you entered the Schengen area in the previous 30 days on the basis of a valid Schengen ADS visa (you would just need to make sure that if you have checked baggage, it will be sent through to your final destinations and not need to be collected at Heathrow. Generally connecting flights offer this.)