When it comes to long term budget travel, flexibility is the name of the game. However, that means that we frequently don’t know how long we’re staying in each country, and don’t have an onward ticket out of a country when we arrive. Many airlines will ask to see an onward ticket before they allow you to board.

People have used many different options to get around this onward ticket requirement, including photoshopping fake tickets (don’t do this), or using onwardticket.com to create a temporary booking. However, neither of these ways are fool proof, as it’s not a real flight booking under your real name.

A trick that we use when this issue arises is booking a fully refundable/fully cancelable ticket through Expedia. Expedia has a 24-hour cancellation policy on most bookings, meaning we can book a random flight out to show the airlines and immigration, and then cancel it for a full refund once we arrive.