You can buy a one-way ticket on regularly scheduled aircraft, connecting in NYC, Miami, or San Juan to the DR and can buy one-ways back to one of these gateway cities and from there to England, but it is often cheaper to buy round-trip tickets and not use the second half. Make the comparison and then decide. You may have to combine carriers, but that is done all the time.

When you arrive in the DR, immigration may or may not aske to see a return ticket. It does not have to be a ticket you plan on using or the second half of a round-trip, just a ticket out of the country before your tourist card expires. On my last visit a couple weeks ago, they did not ask to see my ticket.

I personally don't use the charters because they don't have a lot of backup aircraft (or crew) should a mechanical delay occur and the savings to me isn't worth the risk of a cancel or lengthy delay.

The DR always seems to start enforcing some law that never before was heavily enforced and after a while they slack up again. Lately it is the return tickets (Like so many of us are sneaking in on one-way tickets and producing a return ticket will some how deter us). I remember for a while they were requiring customs forms to be filled out, then they stopped, now they want them again, but they never read them.

I always mark down I have gifts, electronics, AND meat products but they never say anything. They just take the form and wave me through or don't even read the form, open my luggage, and have me shut it again without ever even having shuffled through it. For a while, every motoconcho had to have a helmet or get cited, then they just carried them around for a while, now hardly anybody has them.

Just make sure you have an outbound ticket with you in case they ask and if for some reason you don't, tell them you have an electronic ticket so you cannot produce a physical ticket. This has happened to me a couple times for real and they just accepted my answer. Now I carry the receipt just to avoid the hassle.

Jim Hinsch JimHinsch@CSI.COM