Paraguay has no sea coast and shares borders with Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia, so your exit plan can look odd on paper. The gate agent at your departure airport doesn't care about geography. They care about one thing: can you show how you leave? A dummy ticket, also called an onward ticket, is a real PNR booked for visa or border-check purposes without paying for the flight. These six mistakes are where it goes wrong.

1. Assuming "no onward ticket" means no check

You read one blog post saying Paraguay doesn't ask. Great. Your airline might. Check-in staff apply their own caution, because carriers want to avoid carrying someone who then gets turned away.

The official picture lives on the UK government's Paraguay entry requirements page, and airlines cross-check against industry data. Treat a written rule as the minimum, never the guarantee. Gate staff have discretion. Use it as a reason to prepare.

2. Booking an exit that ignores the map

Paraguay is landlocked, so your options are limited:

  • Fly out of Asunción's Silvio Pettirossi International Airport.
  • Cross by road or river into Argentina, Brazil or Bolivia.

Mistake: showing a flight out of a city you plan to reach by bus, with no sensible route between them. Pick an exit that matches how you actually move. Flying out of Asunción? Show a flight out of Asunción. Leaving overland to Foz do Iguaçu on the Brazilian side? A flight departing from a Brazilian airport is a more believable proof than one from Lima.

Think about it from the desk's side. The agent sees a queue, a screen and a clock. A booking that tells a clean story takes ten seconds. One that raises a question takes ten minutes, and nobody enjoys those ten minutes. Make yours the ten-second kind.

3. Letting the name or dates drift

This is the classic gate failure. The passport says one thing and the reservation says another.

  • Middle names dropped or reordered.
  • Surnames swapped with first names.
  • A departure date that's weeks outside the trip you described.

Fix it before you reach the airport. A name mismatch is the quickest way for a valid reservation to look fake. Our breakdown of the tells that give away a dummy ticket at the gate covers the rest of the usual suspects.

Which brings you to the next one, and it's the mistake that catches the most people.

4. Never verifying the PNR

You got an email. You saw a PDF. You assumed. Agents don't care about a PDF, they care about what the airline's system shows.

Run the check yourself:

  1. Go to the operating airline's "manage booking" page.
  2. Enter the locator and your surname.
  3. Make sure your name, flight number and date appear.

If it won't load, don't board a plane hoping. Sort it out while you've still got a day or two. And ask how long the reservation lasts. Some holds lapse, and a reservation that's gone by the time you reach the desk isn't a plan, it's a problem.

5. Confusing a reservation with a paid fare

Here's a mistake that actually matters for honesty. A dummy reservation shows an intended exit. It isn't a paid, flexible fare, and you shouldn't call it one.

If an agent asks, say it's a booking showing your planned departure. Don't say you've bought the flight if you haven't. Keep your answers short. Short sentences age well under pressure.

If you want the full comparison, read how a dummy ticket differs from a real ticket. Real tickets cost real money and come with fare rules. Reservations don't do either.

Now the last one, and it's less about the booking than about everything around it.

6. Treating one document as the whole plan

An onward booking is one part of the pack. Officers may also look at your accommodation, your funds and your passport validity. Many countries expect a passport to stay valid well past your stay, and the exact figure is on the official page for your nationality, so check it there rather than trusting a number from memory.

Gate staff work through a checklist, and a missing item stalls the whole line. Walking up with everything in order is the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy. It costs you five minutes of preparation the night before.

Carry it all together:

  • Passport and any visa or authorisation.
  • Your onward reservation, ready on your phone and on paper.
  • First-night accommodation details.
  • A sense of what your trip looks like, in your own words.

Airlines also check entry rules against IATA's Timatic database before boarding, which is why the desk, not the border, is often your first test.

None of this is legal or immigration advice. It's general guidance, and entry decisions always rest with the authorities on the day.

Want the reservation sorted before you head to the gate? Book an onward ticket with My Onward Ticket and walk up to the desk ready.