Cabin crew and the passport, visa and crew ID rules: the GD card, the crew visa waivers and what happens when your documents are wrong on the road
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#1 Cathay, five years, and the documents question comes up whenever a new crew member is stopped at an immigration desk abroad, which happens to everyone once. Here is how crew travel documents actually work and what to do when they go wrong.
The general declaration
Crew enter most countries on the airline's general declaration (the GD, the crew list) and their crew ID and passport, under crew visa waivers that exist by agreement between the airline and the country. That is why crew do not queue at immigration with the passengers in most places: the airline has declared you and the country has a crew arrangement. It is not a right; it is an agreement, and it has conditions.
The conditions
You enter as crew, you stay for the layover, you leave as crew on the rostered flight. If you go sick and the airline has to leave you behind, the arrangement changes and the airline's station has to sort your status. If you try to stay for a holiday after the layover, you need a real visa. If you are rostered on one flight and reassigned to another, the GD has to be updated. The crew who get stopped are usually the ones whose paperwork does not match the reality.
The countries that are different
Some countries require crew to hold a visa anyway (the airline arranges it and it lives in your passport). Some require crew to hold a specific crew card. The US has its own crew visa (the C1/D) for non US crew and it is arranged by the airline and it has rules about what you can do on the ground. China has a crew arrangement with conditions. The airline's crew briefing for each destination says which applies and the crew who read it are the ones who are not stopped.
The passport itself
Validity of at least six months beyond every destination on the roster, blank pages for the stamps that some countries still put in crew passports, and a second passport if your airline arranges one for the countries that do not accept the stamps of certain other countries. Chinese and Hong Kong crew have specific document arrangements for some destinations, as do Indian, Pakistani and several other nationalities. Know your own list.
When it goes wrong
An immigration officer who does not accept the GD, a missing stamp, a passport that expires in five months, a name mismatch between the crew list and the passport. What to do: stay calm, do not argue, call the airline's station manager (the number is in the crew briefing and should be in your phone), and let the airline sort it. The station manager has done this before. The crew member who argues with immigration in a foreign country makes it worse every time.
Going sick abroad
The airline has to notify the immigration authority that you are staying, and the station does it. Do not leave the hotel without telling the station. Your status has changed and the airline is responsible for you until you fly out as crew or as a passenger with a ticket the airline arranges.
The lesson
Read the destination briefing. Keep the passport valid and the pages blank. Have the station number. And when the officer looks at you strangely, smile and call the airline. It is their agreement, not yours.
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#2 Japanese, and the second passport point is one that surprises a lot of crew from countries whose stamps cause problems elsewhere. The airline arranges it and it lives in the crew file. Ask about it at induction.
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#3 Qatar from Morocco, and I was stopped once in a country whose crew waiver had changed that month and the briefing had not caught up. The station manager was there in twenty minutes. Do not argue. Call.
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#4 American, and the C1/D for our foreign national crew is a whole process the airline handles and the crew mostly never think about until they are reassigned to a flight it does not cover. The GD has to match the reality, exactly as Leon says.