UK GAR form discussion, and UK border police procedures

The reality in the UK is that getting a “meeting” is

• extremely rare for flights from the EU (never had one myself, and I often forget to file the form, and before c. 2005 I never even heard of the form)
• rare for flights from outside the EU (I got 1 coming back from pre-EU Croatia, but had filed the form and the man agreed I had so it wasn’t about that)
• 100% assured if coming from IOM/Ireland/CI and they think the GAR was not filed

The trivial way to avoid case 3 is to drop in at Cherbourg (etc) when flying to the UK from one of those places. €10.

I have never had a “permission to fly” call, and every cross country flight I make requires a GAR. Has to be a Sussex thing. I once got a call from the Isle of Man plod confirming they had received my form, but they seem to have stopped doing that now.

According to the AOPA/GAR web page…

‘UKBF have introduced more stringent security requirements for the Online GAR system, which will mean all current applications, including the Online GAR and Alternative GAR, will cease to function at some point between now, 15 April 2014, and July 2014. AOPA will have no control on when this will happen’

Tried today to file GAR on AOPA page…seems its gone down already, didnt waste much time after 15/4/2014 did they?

I eventually found what I think you are referring to – here

This is quite worrying, but it seems that the system is being cleared out of the existing apps and they are moving everybody to new apps. Presumably the API has been changed, for some reason…

I also noticed the revised GAR requirements:

Outbound to EU countries (excluding Republic of Ireland) – No GAR needed
Inbound from EU countries (excluding Republic of Ireland) – 4 hours
To/From the Republic of Ireland and Channel Islands – 12 hours
To/From other non-EU countries – 24 hours

The bold bit is new. Previously, a GAR was needed, with a zero notice period. That was just dumb because (obviously) you could have filed it as you take off, so nobody could possibly interview you.

And it looks like Carl’s GAR gateway (also discussed here) works OK.

Personally, I just email the GAR, and don’t fly to Ireland/IOM/CI unless I have to They will remove the email facility one day but I bet it won’t be that soon because a lot of police jobs are being supported by it

‘Personally, I just email the GAR’

Peter, is there an email address for this?

is there an email address for this?

Yes – go here and I have 3 different GAR forms to pick from

The address is in the “click to email” button on the last one – [email protected]

In the Guidance Notes I see the same one.

For years I have been using [email protected] !! Never had a problem.

I wonder if anybody can illuminate that?

Oddly enough I use a MS Word 2003 form which is not on the site. Maybe the reason I didn’t put it up is because with Word docs one never knows what “deleted” data is hidden in the file.

an outbound GAR hasn’t been needed to the EU in quite a while

Oh well

Somebody from a maintenance company at Bournemouth EGHH posted this on a UK site:

I don’t see how that type of discrimination is going to work because the email address is just [email protected] which is a national email address and the GARs get distributed from there to the local police forces.

No. The NCU only distributes to Customs and Immigration.

OK, but that just means somebody was emailing the GAR for the CTA area, which isn’t in any case possible from much/most of the UK.

I don’t know the latest (there are so many GAR forms floating around, with different notes on the back page) but for example for my area the only way to file a CTA GAR was by fax.

It was only with the recent electronic means (of which the Silverlight-based AOPA-sponsored app was the first) that the fax was superseded, which was good because half the time the fax didn’t work (some plod forgot to put paper in the fax machine, perhaps) so I would fax it to the police force next door to mine, and then got a sarcastic phone call at 4am telling me I faxed it to the wrong force, so I would explain I had no option because the “right” fax was not working, to which he replied that that is completely irrelevant “BUT IT SO HAPPENS the duty sergeant is in a good mood so we will send it to the proper force and let it go BUT DON’T DO IT AGAIN”. I almost never fly to the CTA nowadays so it has not been a huge issue for me.

Another classic case of somebody posting something with essential details missed out!