Vietnam PAI Pre-Arrival Form: Airline & OTA Guide (2026)

A boarding pass stub beside a green QR square on a cream field

The form is free. The flight code has to match the booking. Illustration: SimpleVisa

Vietnam's Pre-Arrival Information (PAI) system is the country's digital pre-arrival declaration for foreign passengers. It is free, it sits on top of the visa, e-visa, or visa exemption, and it produces a QR code passengers show at immigration.

For OTAs and airlines, the useful part is why submissions fail. This note is for product and ops teams. It is not legal advice.

The official facts

Pilot start: 15 April 2026 at Tan Son Nhat (SGN, Ho Chi Minh City), per Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security (MPS), Immigration Department.

Rollout: MPS said PAI would be extended nationwide after the pilot. On 17 June 2026, the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam announced that Vietnam is expanding its mandatory pre-arrival personal information declaration for international arrivals to all airports in Vietnam.

Who: all international passengers who do not hold a Vietnamese passport (U.S. Embassy notice).

When: within 3 days before arrival, or on arrival (QR code or paper form at the airport, per the U.S. Embassy).

Where: only the official portal prearrival.immigration.gov.vn. MPS warns of fake sites taking card payments. PAI has no fee.

Not a visa: MPS states PAI only collects pre-trip information and does not receive or decide visa applications.

Rollout status by airport is reported differently by secondary sources. Treat the official portal as the source of truth for any given arrival airport.

Flight code versus PNR

MPS published early pilot results: in the first 15 days (15–30 April 2026), 161,596 passengers started a declaration and 119,854 completed it successfully. MPS explains that some submissions failed because the flight code entered by the passenger did not match the flight data in the PNR.

PAI is validated against airline booking data. That makes it an airline and OTA data-quality problem as well as a passenger problem:

Codeshare bookings. The passenger types the marketing flight number. The PNR data used may be the operating carrier's.

Schedule changes. The flight number or date changed after booking, and the itinerary email the traveler still has is the old one.

Connections. Passengers enter the first leg rather than the flight arriving in Vietnam.

Window timing. The portal works from arrival time, so a passenger trying four days out cannot find the flight.

What OTAs should do

Show the arriving flight explicitly in the confirmation and in pre-trip emails: "Your flight arriving in Vietnam: VN 123 (operated by …), lands SGN 20 Oct 09:00 local."

Trigger a reminder at T-72h before arrival (the arrival, not the departure) with a link to the official portal only.

Re-send after schedule changes. Any flight number or date change should re-issue the PAI reminder.

Never charge for PAI or link to a look-alike portal. If you assist, say the government form is free.

Keep PAI separate from the e-visa step. The e-visa comes first, days or weeks ahead. PAI sits in the final 72 hours. The entry-date rule on the e-visa is a separate problem.

What airlines should do

Make operating and marketing flight numbers clear in the passenger's itinerary and app.

Add PAI to pre-departure messaging for Vietnam-bound flights, from T-72h to T-24h.

Brief ground staff. PAI can also be completed on arrival, per the U.S. Embassy notice, so it should not be treated as a boarding document unless an official instruction says so.

Questions teams ask

Is Vietnam PAI free? Yes. The Ministry of Public Security says PAI has no fee. The only official portal is prearrival.immigration.gov.vn.

When can I submit PAI? Within 3 days before arrival, or on arrival with a QR code or a paper form at the airport, per the U.S. Embassy notice of 17 June 2026.

Does PAI replace the e-visa? No. PAI sits on top of the visa, e-visa, or visa exemption. The Ministry of Public Security states that PAI only collects pre-trip information and does not receive or decide visa applications.

How SimpleVisa helps

SimpleVisa powers Vietnam e-visa applications inside OTA and airline flows and tracks pre-arrival requirements such as PAI, so messaging updates when the government changes the rule. Talk to sales.

Watch Vietnam

Coverage alerts send one email per rule change for the destinations you pick, from the partner console. Systems can take the same events as webhooks; the shape is in the developer docs. The live requirement for any passport is always in the requirements checker.

Information current at publication (13 Oct 2026), based on the sources below. Not legal advice. Entry requirements can change. Confirm with the official Vietnamese sources before travel or before changing a product.

Sources

MPS, PAI system, 11 May 2026 verified 12 Oct 2026 · U.S. Embassy in Vietnam, 17 Jun 2026 verified 12 Oct 2026 · Official PAI portal verified 12 Oct 2026 · Vietnam e-visa portal verified 12 Oct 2026

Loris Mazloum

Founder, SimpleVisa

Loris Mazloum founded SimpleVisa and writes the coverage notes on this blog for airlines, OTAs, and other travel companies. Each note is checked against the government source named at the bottom before it publishes. SimpleVisa keeps requirement data for 190+ destinations and files applications where a government channel exists.