I just file all the GAR’s via rocket route, never had any issues…
OK, but then you miss out on the Holy Grail which is getting it free of charge 
OnlineGAR offers a great service for £3 a time. Many/most bizjet pilots use it because they can preconfigure all passengers etc.
@Peter: the text I posted came from Carl from OnlinegGAR. If you can not find any legislation, I can’t find the same for the Dutch, who are implementing a similar system as the Brits and where they want to receive passport details at least 2 hours before off blocks time on inbound and outbound flights. I can see an ICAO GenDec requirement, but that document does not include passport numbers of crew and passengers. On questioning this, I got no clear answer other than that they will require it anyways.
The legislation is easy to find for the police forces (12 hours notice in the common travel area).
It’s section 12 of schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
The customs and immigration legislation is harder to find. The legislation itself gives the UK Customs powers to demand all sorts of stuff that they deem appropriate (not hard to find), and they have written their own rules deciding on what that information must be (which are law in the UK). But those rules seem harder to find. Likewise I struggled to find the immigration rules.
I have met Carl and I doubt he would have said the UK primary legislation is asking for an Excel spreadsheet. I simply cannot imagine such a law being drafted in the UK legal system. It would be laughed at.
I provided the text from this link:
It’s the GAR guidance notes.
The border force wish to automate data capture as much as they can in order to get the data into their internal system. Using OnlineGAR/SkyDemon/AOPA provides the data as XML directly into their back office systems and provides a receipt. An emailed xls form can be input to the system, but still needs human resource. PDF/Fax etc would need manually rekeying, so that’s a real pain for them.
I’m no legal expert and can’t say what is primary/secondary legislation, but I believe it’s in everyone’s best interests to make it easy for them to do their job. I wouldn’t recommend sending PDF or Fax.
@carlmeek: thanks for posting the link to the GAR guidance notes.
@dublinpilot: thanks for finding the legislation.
Is there anyone that can find the appropriate legislation for the Dutch border force to demand whatever they feel appropriate? I can not find it.
The border force wish to automate data capture as much as they can in order to get the data into their internal system. Using OnlineGAR/SkyDemon/AOPA provides the data as XML directly into their back office systems and provides a receipt. An emailed xls form can be input to the system, but still needs human resource.
In that case, why do their guidance notes say
using the January 2015 Excel version of the GAR form
I can see a .xls can be machine-read (if you code the various different versions of .xls and .xlsx etc, going all the way back to 1993 or so) but you don’t have to totally re-key a PDF either; you can copy/paste. Also it would be easy enough to machine-read a PDF version of the GAR form, without decoding the PDF format.
XML is rather “turn of the century” stuff
.. but why not use on line GAR the cost is trivial relative to everything else and the email to prove they have the document is useful?
Peter wrote:
I can see a .xls can be machine-read (if you code the various different versions of .xls and .xlsx etc, going all the way back to 1993 or so) but you don’t have to totally re-key a PDF either; you can copy/paste. Also it would be easy enough to machine-read a PDF version of the GAR form, without decoding the PDF format.XML is rather “turn of the century” stuff
.xls is a lot easier to machine read than PDF. There exist libraries for many languages (at least Perl and Java, and almost certainly for .net given it’s a Microsoft product) which will read an Excel spreadsheet from Office 97 and onwards, and you can get the data in a structured form (in other words, request data by row/column, so if a person hasn’t modified the spreadsheet you can easily get the values you want out).
With PDF (where a form wasn’t published) you get no such structure, and the text is not stored in a straightforward way (and there isn’t even a guarantee that the text is stored – the software that produced the PDF may have decided to produce it as an image if for instance a font was used cannot be embedded). For instance if the string “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is stored in a PDF, and you try to get it out, what you might get are four bits of text like “The qui”, “ck brown f”, “ox jumps over the lazy d”, “og”. PDF is great for making printable documents, but it’s terrible for ad-hoc data capture unless the person requesting the data published a PDF form with fields to fill in (which in this case, they haven’t done). So you’re left with copy/paste which can also be a bit of a pain in the backside to do (especially if the PDF generating software turned it into an image).
With XML, you can publish an XSD so those making the XML files can actually validate the structure and content meets format constraints (and the recipient can validate it before processing it).
It would be nice if Border Force published the XSD. No disrespect to Carl (I use OnlineGAR, it’s a good site) but I don’t think it’s right that if we are compelled to fill in a GAR, we also can’t see the information we need to produce the report in the most efficient manner. Perhaps we can force them to give out the format information with a Freedom of Information Act request but this shouldn’t be necessary.
