Customs - what would you do?

Report it with the details you have written here.
Such a situation is intolerable and is not in the spirit of égalité as they would not dare to hold a CAT flight so that it misses its CTOT as there can be large penalties involved.

I think the answer depends on the law in your country.

For Germany, even Germans disagree For France, nobody knew the answer.

The above link shows that they can do what they like – because nobody argues with a 9mm carrying individual who was selected for an IQ in a particular range and not above.

there can be large penalties involved.

Really? I always had the very clear impression that airport police – certain countries in particular – regard airports as a place to sit and get paid, and it’s nothing to do with the airport’s survival or even anything to do with flying And they love to let everybody know that this is how it works. Take the airport off our “travelling list” → it loses 1/3 of its traffic → it might go bust → not our problem.

I too would have thought that if one departs at the filed time, and has provably complied with PN requirements (how to prove that is another discussion), and the police don’t turn up, it is not your problem. But clearly there are counter-examples in law.

AIUI if a CAT misses its slot then they can/are fined or at least that’s what EasyJet used to tell passengers when the check in desk is closed on them.
Yes there are officials who think they own the world but forcing someone to miss a slot on an outbound journey when they could have simply allowed the flight to take off on time as I assume they had all the details (passport numbers, names, addresses etc) from the PN email. Anything else that needed to be checked could have been done over the phone. As @LFHNflightstudent was leaving the country, he was hardly likely to be smuggling anything or anyone in.
IMO this was an abuse of power and there are laws against that in France.
@Peter you keep on about not arguing with gendarmes because they carry 9mm guns, you don’t know the French.
By the way they also carry tasers and on occasion something much more lethal.

LFHNflightstudent wrote:

Do you wait, or leave? To be clear at my ETD – no customs, at my CTOT time no customs, but they rock up late at 0940 and had instructed the lady at the FBO to ‘’hold me’’
Keen to see what others here would have done.

Customs and immigration are the closest thing to an absolute power. They can delay your flight or your immigration for hours if they “find” something worth investigating, you need them, for them you are a nuissance as they have to come out to the airport for you. Your CTOT or desired departure time is but a information to them that they should turn up at that time, but as most of the time they are ordinary police men who at the time may be busy with something else, they may or may not be on time. Hence most customs airports have the rule that if they do not arrive within a given time (mostly one hour after the time they were supposed to be there) you are free to go unless they say otherwise.

My experience with customs is to treat them with the given respect towards their powers, knowing that if they don’t cooperate, I will not fly or go anywhere. 99% they will turn up, check your papers and leave. Annoy them and you are in for a couple of hours of customs and immigration check, your airplane or car being taken to pieces and your luggage taken apart down to cut open toothpaste and you can find yourself being subjected to body checks. They have the power to detain you for 23:59 hours without any charges, so be careful.

I’ve had this twice, once in France and once in Germany. In France, they took our paperwork while one stood about 10 m from the airplane with his hand on his gun, while the other two disappeared with our paperwork for 45 minutes. We were told to stand next to the airplane with our hands in the open during that time. When they came back, they handed us back the paperwork, pointed out a minor detail in the airplane papers but they would graciously let us off, as they had another airplane coming and left.

After our lunch we saw them still at the other plane, 3 hours later. When we went back to our plane, we overheard the crew argue with them…. bad idea. Their luggage was spread out all over the tarmac and several inspection plates of their airplane had been removed by a local maintenance guy they enlisted for the purpose.

The other one was in Germany, where a police patrouille was detailed to check us in Mengen. They oredered us to disload the airplane totally and proceeded to spread our luggage as well as all every single item found in the airplane onto the wings, checking everything against lists of stolen items (cameras, phones) and made a detailed list of everything we have. Took 2 hours after which we were released and they went towards the next landing plane, also from Switzerland. Those colleagues arrived 3 hours after us at the final destination.

In Speyer we once landed and were detained for 3 hours on arrival as THEIR PPR system for the customs arrival had failed and the form we had filled in went into void. The airport staff were apologetic but said they had to observe the full PPR time or get a release which they finally got.

In all these cases, PPR and customs requirements had been fulfilled to the letter.

I have always seen customs as an absolute power. They can detain you and your airplane for hours (up to 24 if they so wish) and hassle you at their hearts desire if they have any sort of suspicion (which obviously is their job to have). So the only thing you can do is to stand by, give all information they ask and cooperate as well as possible. Nonwithstanding, these few incidents were years in between and very far apart. French customs usually just check papers and off you go, 2-3 minutes. But if they are busy and can’t attend, you wait. QUIETLY.

I cross the border by car often but never was harassed but I know people who spent up to 10 hours in a holding cell while their car was torn to bits, including checking the inside of the tyres by both Swiss and German customs near Basle. Apparently they had complained about their treatment on a previous check and got the full monty when the agents spotted their license plate a few months later.

I was once told that some customs agents keep a list of registrations to watch out, because the crew had been uncooperative or had filed complaints. Turn up in such a plane and you will know.

My own tactics has become to avoid customs PPR if at all possible and to go to places where customs have regular attendance. There are very few these days which do however. When dealing with customs, I always cooperate fully, particularly at airports where I have to use them regularly. But most of the time, they don’t put in an appearance anyway.

gallois wrote:

they would not dare to hold a CAT flight so that it misses its CTOT as there can be large penalties involved.

The problem does not arise for a CAT flight. In those, customs and immigrations checks are done pre boarding, so simply if they throw a wobbly at a particular person, they will detain that one and the airplane will leave without them. Happens quite often. After arrival, you will never know, passengers can simply get detained if they want to check them.

I’ve rarely seen them check biz jets, but they do if they feel like it. However, in general, they are not allowed onto a plane, if it is not their own countries registration, as it is foreign soil. So they will either get a warrant (rarely) or make pax and crew spread their belongings on the tarmac.

gallois wrote:

AIUI if a CAT misses its slot then they can/are fined or at least that’s what EasyJet used to tell passengers when the check in desk is closed on them.

No way. You need to get a new slot. That is all. CAT miss their slots all the time. Telling this to pax is simply a way of exusing strict closure times of check in. I’ve had this in Sofia, twice, where check in was closed up when the plane had not even landed. We missed two flights this way on our own costs. I complained the first time but never got even as much as a reply.

I agree one should be polite, treat them with respect (as you would expect to be treated) and to answer any questions they ask you.
There doesn’t need to be confrontation in the form of an argument or anything else.
That should not stop you from finding out the reason they are late and for them to apologise for holding the flight up. We all have schedules to keep.They should treat the pilot with the respect he deserves also.
If you find your aircraft is on some sort of blacklist for the sole reason that you have argued with someone in the past, that is intolerable. It needs reporting to the appropriate authorities, so that those officers are spoken to and if necessary retrained. Proving that you are on a blacklist might be difficult.
The FFA have dealt with this in the past by taking the matter up with the minister involved and reminders of the limits of their powers have been sent out to all douaniers.
But that was years ago and people will be people, which is why I wrote that this event should be reported. It might have been a simple error or a delay on the road. But one should know why. Or does one, in future, give an earlier ETOB to the douanier?

gallois wrote:

I agree one should be polite, treat them with respect (as you would expect to be treated) and to answer any questions they ask you.
There doesn’t need to be confrontation in the form of an argument or anything else.
That should not stop you from finding out the reason they are late and for them to apologise for holding the flight up. We all have schedules to keep.They should treat the pilot with the respect he deserves also.

That is definitly how it SHOULD be.

gallois wrote:

Proving that you are on a blacklist might be difficult.

Exactly, more closely impossible. The only hunch you may get is that police turn up EVERY time you land with a certain airplane or when a certain person gets checked every time he makes an appearance. Proving it is impossible.

gallois wrote:

But that was years ago and people will be people, which is why I wrote that this event should be reported. It might have been a simple error or a delay on the road. But one should know why. Or does one, in future, give an earlier ETOB to the douanier?

My experience is that if you report this, it will come back to the agents in question who will then know who reported them. chances that they will retaliate totally within their powers are high, so I would never do that. And no, you can’t even do that, as the EOBT is dependent on the flight plan. The simple thing is, if they are not there, wait, get a new one.

If it’s my regular place, I would wait to get to know each other and maybe exchange their direct details, it will save you load of time later on

If it’s a random place, I would just leave my details at the desk, with ATC in the tower, I will depart at my slot if everything is in order, if it’s uncontrolled, I would delay a bit wait to see what is going (15min?) and depart if they are not around…

Note that they do get asked to chase some random reg on random day from time to time by their superiors and some are probably having a bad day as well

I had a similar experience last year in Venezia-Lido (LIPV). As I needed a passport check for leaving (!) the Schengen-zone towards Croatia, and immigration is only available PNR, I had to wait around 30 min after ETD before two cops in civil clothes showed up. They even didn’t want us to show their official badges or ID, they just took our passports and send us out of the office for another 20 minutes. I don’t know what they did with our passports, but after 20 minutes, they came out and we were ready to go. In the meantime, I just quickly called ATC for a one-hour delay on our flightplan.

Personally, I do like the Swiss rule quite a lot on aerodromes how offer customs PNR/PPR: If customs/border police don’t show up at ETD (pre-departure) or ETA (post-arrival), you’re free to go. I’ve only once had a check from Swiss border forces (“Grenzwache”) at Bressaucourt (LSZQ) upon arrival from Germany. Both officials were very polite, so the check went fast and was done in a few minutes. Many other times I flew into Switzerland, no one was interested, even not when coming from Croatia (non-Schengen) at Lugano.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Customs and immigration are the closest thing to an absolute power.

Yes, that’s unfortunately (for the most part) true. My father was once a Dutch customs officer at the Dutch-German border in the 80’s (before EU-borders went open), so I know the tricks a little bit and how far you can argue with them. If you feel harassed by them abroad, just politely tell them you want to call the ambassador of your country (even a lot better than an attorney). This is of course only applicable for real inconvenient behavior by the officers, not just for one-hour waiting.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

The other one was in Germany, where a police patrouille was detailed to check us in Mengen.

I’ve heard several negative stories about Mengen in general. Someone advised me to never use that aerodrome for border checks. There seems to be also an angry “Flugleiter” in Mengen, at least some years ago, according to several negative airfield reviews. On the other hand: Federal police in Germany is not customs and they are not so easily allowed to check all your baggage. In return: Customs is allowed to perform also passport checks.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

I cross the border by car often but never was harassed but I know people who spent up to 10 hours in a holding cell while their car was torn to bits, including checking the inside of the tyres by both Swiss and German customs near Basle. Apparently they had complained about their treatment on a previous check and got the full monty when the agents spotted their license plate a few months later.

Sounds like a little bit odd story. It might be true of course, but such behavior really needs to be reported. This could cost a customs officer his/her job. On the other hand: I do agree that complaints mostly don’t have any effect. But if you complain and get harassed sometime later, these officers can get suspended or even fired, if you complain again. That’s why I’m a little bit skeptical about the story, at least when it comes to “proper” countries like Germany and Switzerland.