GAR form - do you have to inform immigration?

[patowalker]

I have never sent a copy of to Headcorn or to the "Other Airfield" where the aircraft is based. No fax or email there.

[Contacttower]

The airport is required to hold a copy of the GAR, hence the reason most airfields say to fax it to them.

Where is that written down? I have to say I've never heard of that and during discussions with police in Tayside (that's Perth/Dundee area for those who don't know) they said just to email it to them direct, they didn't mention any requirement for the airfield to have it.

[martello]

gar forms online

in the interests of correcting any speculation......
a lot of work has already been done on online forms - I've been doing (under aopa auspices) this with UKBA - it was hoped to have a complete online submission by this summer but there are some delays in Home Office IT. There is a test website already functioning to roll out firstly on AOPA's site which will be free to all comers -other associations may follow suit with their own similar portals. The trial version is already passing GARS and validating them. There are also an iPhone and an Android App doing the same thing, just awaiting final tweaking. We await some further meetings with UKBA and it is hoped all this functionality will all be launched in the next month - sadly a little late for the season but there is further work to do and it is felt better to let the system bed in before the Olympic year. I speak as a private volunteer who has done all of the work - it is in UKBA's hands whether they launch now with a preliminary version or not. We should know shortly. The plan was to incorporate the police at a later date, in any case the aim is to take the guess work out of who to send it to, from the pilot's point of view. This it does successfully now - it is also a much speedier process.

[Fokkerwokker]

Martello

Thank you for that interesting update.

FW

[DaveW]

Originally Posted by martello

I speak as a private volunteer who has done all of the work

and a heart-felt thank you for that work, martello.

The iPhone and Android apps will be particularly handy, but even without them this will be a great step forwards.

[dublinpilot]

Hi Martello,

Thanks for your work! It will be great to have such a system.

Presumably it will also give some form of confirmation so that you can prove you've made the required submission.

I hope you can get the police onboard soon too. Trying to figure out which police force to send it to is often the biggest problem for me!

dp

[martello]

gar forms

Tak for tak or thanks for thanks as the scandinavians say. Yes the apps and even the website portals (which are basic) will send a confirmation email. The delay is in linking to the Home Office secure servers, but I have an interim solution using just email. As of today we await the decision of the 'joint approvals committee' If that goes in favour in a week or two then the AOPA subsite will be open to the public, I will have a demo of smartphone apps on "You tube" and they will probably be on the Market or iphone store by Sept ish. The smartphone apps are a big timesaver as you can store all the details of pax. They also allow you to send cancellations and amendments and relate these to the previously sent GAR. All versions recognise if it is a CTA trip and prompt for a Police email. I hope to incorporate this as an automatic facility later but I have to go at the pace of the Home Office.I stress that as yet no negotiations have taken place with the police and this is a UKBA(and me:-)) initiative.Will keep all posted - If anyone has an Android 2.1 or better phone and would like to trial the app please pmail me -trial can be used live/in earnest depending on your UKBA field office - (iPhone volunteer list already full !!)

[martello]

update on electronic GAR

Just an update as promised on the status of a Web based GAR submission.
As reported here and elsewhere the Home Office have had a change of contractor on the eBorders project. Whilst this is not the direct cause, there is some significant delay in implementing an interface to the eBorders secure servers. We have been told we cannot now go live (as was expected in August) with the AOPA web portal nor with the smartphone apps - which we had in an interim form without the relevant interface but with emails connecting to various required receivers. Various project activities now have to take place with ominous sounding names like 'risk assessment' 'business case'. When the interface is ready a consultation will take place. So my estimate is that this will not now see the light of day until spring next year.
Meanwhile the Android app is still available for free on the android market (or at least I will post a new version in the next two weeks) if anyone wants to play with it and send me feedback. This will have some new and useful WX charts including cloud tops. It will be fully functional in terms of sending a GAR via email though it currently marks the GAR as a 'test'. In limited areas we may succeed in having local trials of this interim solution for real - if you wish to take part pmail me

As for the complete solution think next summer.

JM

[martello]

update on GAR

oh forgot to mention - specially for DublinPilot -:-) there will be an ability to import a PFMS flight Plan

[Nibbler]

This is not me having a pop at anyone, more perhaps the way our society seems to operate...

In one week I managed to secure the approval of all the relevant authorities in Dorset to accept GARs via email from our website - the same amount of time it took to write the software and launch the service. It is available via mobile, has anti spam and has been running for over a year now. The service is free, no advertising, uncomplicated and works perfectly 100% of the time without a single complaint from the users or the authorities (so far!).

The same could be done for any region prepared to accept GARs via email. This is usually nothing more a simple negotiation with the local man in charge of each agency. The service could operate on a white site (non-business or unaffiliated) with ease.

Price to the authorities - Free
Price to users - Free

So what happens instead? It makes you wonder and I guess there is plenty of time for that!

[IO540]

What does/did happen instead?

Where is your site? This would amount to substantial progress.

[Nibbler]

IO540 strangely enough it was mentioned by someone else who found it, in a post on the first page of this topic, but I am more than happy to include it again: Airtime Charters - Complete ALL details as you would with a paper GAR then click SUBMIT GAR FORM at the bottom of the page | Airtime Charters

Although an IT/Web developer myself (yes I hear the cries of traitor!) I do appreciate the need for a simple online GAR submission form that does just that.

[IO540]

OK; I now recall seeing it originally but as it mentioned Dorset-only I would have ignored it.

Are you saying it is now all-UK, or are you saying that you could not get permission from the remaining UK areas?

Sorry if I have misunderstood your slightly cryptic post

Also, I am not sure why a web developer should be a traitor Good specimens of those are most useful And if you know how to set up VPNs, that's a bonus

[Nibbler]

I came from an IT / Sever / Networking background before I ditched the stress for web development, VPN is a familiar tool.

Perhaps I am becoming cynical but I think software these days tries to be a bit too smart for its own good, making it cost more, take longer to develop and is less usable.

As for the online GAR. It could easily be made available in the regions happy to accept it via email. I'd like to expand into other Counties and would probably have tried to do so if I ever flew out from anywhere other than Dorset. I'd even put it on a non-branded website if other Counties came on board. The key is to find a champion in each County to take the time to negotiate with the local authorities.

The negotiation part sounds a tough one but the reality is most agencies already accept GARs via email, usually leaving just the one agency to be convinced. We did this in Dorset by replicating the content of the official form visually but in particular ensuring the wording was exact, that made them happy.

Selling points to the agencies were - no more failed faxes, faxes sent to the wrong number, unreadable print outs, unreadable hand writing and missing information (due to the *required fields on the form).

The one we use for Dorset is clear evidence the concept and functionality are sound.

All I need to know the relevant email addresses and the County - job done (in a matter of days).

3 issues came up. First was the initial shock at the local office who (almost predictably) were not expecting it because they were not told about it. You can't control this but worth mentioning it when speaking to agency contacts. The other was to give the agencies a way to update their GAR email address, which was easy to fix. Finally commitment to feedback 1 - to ensure problems are resolved should they happen 2 - if the GAR form is updated.

That's it really, happy to answer any other questions.

[BackPacker]

Not sure if this has appeared here earlier, but I think various people had in the past proposed knocking up a website where one would enter the details of the flight, and it would advise the correct authorities.

Actually a while ago I spent a few hours writing just that. An HTML form/CGI script combo (plain HTML so usable from your iPad/Android as well) which would ask the required information, use the ICAO identifiers of the airfields involved to figure out where to send the info to, and fill in the (official) GAR PDF with the required information.

It would then e-mail the GAR form to the proper authorities, with CC or BCC to the submitter. (And would notify you of any authorities that would not accept e-mail, so you can fax the form yourself to those.)

I abandoned the project at the stage where I would need to fill (and maintain) the database of e-mail addresses, and where I had to implement a PayPal "volunteer donation" scheme to make a little money to pay for the development/maintenance time, server and bandwidth. (I figured that if 10% of the users would donate 1 UKP per GAR form sent, I would already break even.)

The negotiation part sounds a tough one but the reality is most agencies already accept GARs via email, usually leaving just the one agency to be convinced. We did this in Dorset by replicating the content of the official form visually but in particular ensuring the wording was exact, that made them happy.

My script uses perl and the PDF::API2 to take an official empty PDF GAR form, and place the data fields exactly where they need to go. So the agencies receive an actual PDF GAR form, not an almost-like-a-GAR-form-email. And that PDF is obviously sent as an attachment.

I'd be happy to donate the code that I wrote for this to you if you're interested, Nibbler. It might make your negotiations easier.

(Edited: PPRuNe at it again. This was submitted at 11:00, *after* the post of IO540 which appears below.)

[BackPacker]

Nibbler, PM sent.

(Edited: Once again: Sent at 16:00 but the time got mangled by PPRuNe.)

[IO540]

Not sure if this has appeared here earlier, but I think various people had in the past proposed knocking up a website where one would enter the details of the flight, and it would advise the correct authorities.

Some of these were contactable only by fax (still the case IIRC for most of Special Branch) so such a website would have involved a prepay account to finance the fax costs.

If one can do all notifications by email, the need for prepay disappears.

It is then also incidentally less important to be correctly selective on "over-notifying" e.g. some pilots already send the GAR to all 3 services for every foreign flight, using a batch script

A nice feature would be to store personal details for recalling on repeat flights but that gets you hassles with the DPA

My recollection was that the principal issue which would remain is a liability for a failure to deliver the notification. This is still present if you use email, but I suppose one could circumvent that adequately by ensuring the email was apparently delivered (which is easy), BCCing it to yourself (the site owner) and then emailing a copy of the BCCs (with headers & all) to the filing pilot. You also have to hope that no force has silly spam filters...

The problem is that Special Branch in particular, as I know too well, can get exceedingly anal about this. On one occassion their fax was not working (no paper?) so I faxed the GAR to a neighbouring force, and got a 4am call giving me a bollocking; the officer was completely uninterested in their duff fax machine as that was clearly my responsibility

So one might expect to get a little bit of flak here and there

So what is happening to Martello's project? When I spoke face to face to the Borders people a year or two ago, they were going to set up a website which would do the lot, and it would be "official".

[ifonly]

Nibbler

Does your system differentiate between the different types of notifications required (EU, Non-EU, CTA etc) or does it send it to all email addressess regardless of whether they have any legal right to the information?

[Nibbler]

Backpacker - Clearly you've put a bit of time and thought into it and I would be delighted to see / have a copy of the code. I like your ideas.

A UK wide facility? In my opinion the only way forward and to make any progress at all is to make this available in those Counties who are willing. The others might well follow suit, they may not. Either way it becomes a whole lot better for everyone in participating Counties.

IO540 - Indeed the FAX issue was raised but we overcame it with a little logic. All these agencies do actually have and use email. They are all able to create or to nominate an email account to receive the GARs, it simply takes the will to do it. So we are back to the all the benefits I mentioned.

Email failure. It can happen, usually at the receiving end. The set up here copies to the sender, us as the host and all the agencies. Should one agency not receive it then it's no drama. As any of these agencies will tell you they are not overly concerned about genuine errors, mistakes or a one off non-receipt. (I might add there are individuals who try to make more of it than it warrants but it never comes to more than a few tuts). With a copy it can easily be proven it was actually sent.

SPAM filters I didn't have a problem because it is sent as plain text, no attachments and no links. Simply white listing the host email solves any additional issues.

Storing the form information, our system does it. I overcame data protection issues using a piece of code allowing the details to be cached when the form is submitted. It's computer and browser specific so if you complete the form on the same computer using the same browser you can do it very quickly indeed. Not every box is cached so with 'public' computers in flying clubs (the worry is someone sends the form pretending to be you) they would need to know or guess those details. It would be highly unlikely to happen in the first place and equally unlikely the 'missing' information would be known or guessed correctly.

Obviously having an official website running official software has the warm fluffy feeling of security and reassurance.

[IO540]

SPAM filters I didn't have a problem because it is sent as plain text

That's interesting. So you don't send the actual GAR form?

When I email mine I email the actual form, printed to a PDF.

Contacting the sysadmin of each force and making sure they have whitelisted your SMTP server is a smart move