GAR form - do you have to inform immigration?
 

When going to the Channel Islands, I send the GAR to Special Branch and Customs (12hrs in advance of way out and return due to private airfield).

When going to an EU state, it is only required to sent the GAR to Customs 4 hours before arrival back in the UK.

Is there are requirement to send a GAR to immigration under any circumstances? Our "immigration contact" numbers listed on the GAR form are dead....

Thanks

I don't know the answer, Englishal, but I always fax mine to all three :)

Many of the fax numbers on the official form are duff but The Plod couldn't care less. I tend to fax it to some other number instead, until I find one that works, and let them sort it out.

Thanks....I send mine by email - It'd be handy if Immigration have an email address then I could just copy all three in one go....Do you have any immigration contact numbers / addresses / websites by any chance?

Cheers

PS Re AFPEx and Flight planning top tip - to receive a copy of the FP youself, add your AFPEx address in one of the address boxes at the top ;)

I am advised by the staff at Swanwick that you absolutely should not do this, because it triggers an alarm at their end; this is to prevent messages looping back indefinitely in some circumstances.

The only way to check that a VFR flight plan has been transmitted is to look in your Outbox, and it should be there. That's the way VFR flight plans are... there is no way to know (short of a phone call etc) anybody has seen it or even got it.

oops..... :O

GAR
 

This all relates to the fact that the UK did not sign up to the Schengen agreement, essentially the border controls that were supposed to dissapear as part of our membership of the EU didn't, and as a consequence, if you leave the UK FIR you must flight plan out, complete Schengen formalities at your remote destination (ie Land at a customs capable airfield at first landing outside UK FIR)and then with at least 12 hours notice inform the UK authorities about your return time and return airfield.This is so that a couple of overweight plods in cheap Matalan suits driving a really rubbish car can come along and rummage through your stuff Its a job I suppose!!

There are rumours that a fully online GAR form is coming soon. Has anybody heard when this might be?

I would hope that when this does happen, pressing the submit button will automatically send the form to all the right agencies without us pondering about dead fax numbers and the seriously conflicting advice we get when trying to find out who needs the GAR form for which type of flight (EU / CTA), how many hours notice etc etc.

It might also be good if the form was able to store the basic details.

I'm just about to try out the AFPEx (online flight plan submission) system for the first time next week having received my passwords and complex passphrase etc. Apart from the rather long time this thing takes to download each time you log in, has anyone had any problems using it so far? It seems like a really helpful step forward on the face of it.

We recently had a visit from Special Branch. Two immaculately dressed young men, intelligent, personable and informed! They arrived in the deputy chief constable's 5 series!

Pleasantries were exchanged and I explained the 'unnotified aircraft movement' they had just witnessed.

Sweetness and light compared with the Customs and Excise 'Intelligence' officer.......

is it my imagination or is the whole thing becoming un-workable? Last time we were in France we became weathered in at Abbeville for a few days. When we did eventually leave, to fly to Headcorn, it was at a few minutes notice. Our weather guru was watching the metars and forecast for the south UK and he said 'if we go in the next twenty mins we should get through a gap in the fronts around Dover before it closes up again' so we did. He was spot on. We filed our flight plans, activated them by radio as we passed Le Touquet and coasted out near Cap GN.

' went into torrential rain near to Ashford and landed in 'sod tout' visibility at Headcorn. Not a lot of chance to give them 12 hours notice by GAR. The Rans is not an 'All Weather Fighter' and we cannot run to a timetable. The joys of microlighting.....

We had the man from Cust and Imig come to our club to do a presentation on this subject. When I put our circumstances to him he was able to shrug his shoulders but could not offer a workable solution.

Rans6Andrew.

The notification period from France to a GAA airfield like Headcorn (or even a farmstrip) is 4 hours, not 12; but otherwise I take your point.

sorry if this is off topic or wrong place please move if needed

I am after a very simple answer to what i thought would be a simple question but everything i read seems to complicate matters!

first ga flight out of country to IOM.
Just trying to figure out what forms and to who with what notice, I've read so many post I'm dizzy
I am fine with flight plans and have the GAR form but cant figure out whom to send it to, fax numbers and with what notice.

I have special branch, customs and immigration on my list, departing and returning from/to designated airport (Liverpool)

cant work out if I need to do all 3 for outbound AND inbound and what notice

Whom must I inform if I am going to be late ?

Please I'm sure someone must have done this many times and is simple once it's put into basic form or 'fill in x and send to 0870 999 000 two hrs before' and 'before you come back...'

Many thanks for any info :ugh:

Yep its on the way. The new GAR pdf is stage one. By end of 2010 it will be a form to fill in and complete whilst online with drop down menus. Pressing the submit button will automatically send it to the relevant UK police force and UK Borders. That's the sales pitch. It will of course be stored and over time a profile of the pilot/plane will be built up that can be examined by said authorities.

Just out of curiosity, are foreign registered planes / foreign pilots / foreign-licenced pilots, or any combination thereof, expected to jump through those same hoops?

For UK mainland to IOM, you fax the GAR to Special Branch (police) only. Customs/Immigration not involved - AIUI.

Yes.

However, a "genuine foreigner" would probably fly to the IOM (or Ireland - same scenario) direct from some country other than the UK, so would be subject to the IOM's own notification requirements, which are a bit more reasonable than those of the UK mainland police.

The "better funded" pilots tend to deal purely via handling agents and the agent takes care of all this crap for you. He needs to know, for everyone aboard, the name address passport #, which I think he needs to know anyway.

What I do now for every flight abroad to cover my arse, is just email off the GAR to NCU and the local plod. No response received or required, and just go.

In the case of a flight to the CI/Ireland/ION, the Plod do however normally phone you, often in the middle of the night, with a "permission number".

They don't need to give a "permission" but they don't know the law.

LH2, what you need to understand is that with international flights you are normally expected to fly from a customs/immigration airport to a customs/immigration airport. At these airports your passports are checked, you have the ability to declare goods etc. This is regardless of the registration of your plane, passport or license.

The GAR form is a unique UK thing: By filling it in and faxing it to the proper authorities with sufficient prior notice (all depending on where you are coming from/going to; the details are on the back of the form) you can essentially fly from any UK airfield to foreign, or from foreign to any UK airfield. Obviously only if you have no goods to declare, and subject to a few other reasonable restrictions.

So the GAR form, despite the challenge of figuring out where and when to fax it to, is designed to make things simpler, not more complicated. And in fact, it can be very simple: just phone up the UK airfield involved (usually PPR anyway), tell them the GAR form is on the way to them via fax, and ask them to forward it to the proper authorities for their field.

And yes, the GAR form and its associated liberties can be used by foreign registrations, passports and license holders too.

At the other end of your trip, usually mainland Europe, Ireland or some small island like Jersey or IOM, your first or last port of call should still be a customs airfield. I don't know of any GAR-form-like mechanisms within Europe or Ireland.

And of course, once you're inside the EU/Schengen region, you're free to fly from any field to another. (Countries that are in the Schengen region but not in the EU, or vice versa, are a slightly more complicated matter.)

Just to point out that this isn't uniform across police forces. Many seem to just ignore the fax (or probably correctly realise that you've met your obligations and don't need any permission number).

So if you don't get a phone call with a permission number, don't be too worried about that.

I've never received such a call, but have come across one force (North Wales) who for some reason expected me to call them looking for the number!

This is not something that I would do. The obligation to notify your flight rests with you, not the airport.

If someone forgets to do it, or the airport claims they never received your fax (eg. machine out of paper, and someone stupidly resets the memory first instead of checking the paper) then it's you that comes into question.

Saying that you faxed it to the airport, won't really cut any ice with the authorities, because a) the airport may deny ever receiving it, and b) it's your obligation.

Having had the "please call special branch" call given to me by ground ops on arrival, and then received a lecture for not notifying my flight, I was very happy to be able to politely inform SB, that not only had I notified my flight within the proper time scales, but I also had a fax confirmation page (with me) that could prove that they received it.

If you fly regularly with these flights, then it's a matter of "when" you get questioned by SB rather than "if", even though you've done everything correct. I always have my fax confirmation page with me now.

dp

Online GAR form for Dorset
 

If you're flying from/to anywhere in Dorset i.e. Bournemouth, there's already an online working GAR that's approved by the authorities.

Link here: Airtime Charters - Complete ALL details as with paper GAR then click SUBMIT GAR FORM at the bottom of the page - CAUTION - This form is for DORSET County use ONLY | Airtime Charters

I've been using it for a couple of months now without any problems. I understand it's likely to be rolled out to accomodate the whole country soon :D

On a separate issue, IO540 - you can check your AFPEX flight plan has gone into the system ok. As you say, you should not put your own address in but once it has been sent you can do an RQP (request flight plan), just enter the callsign, departure aerodrome and destination and the AFPEX system will return the registered flight plan to you (assuming it IS in the system).

Any update on the online GAR form
 

Does anyone know if the online GAR form described above will be rolled out across the UK this year - the earlier post in this thread suggested end 2010 as the timeframe?

Clearly this would make everyone's life a little easier for foreign trips this season.