I suspect RR does the same as Autorouter an just emails it to the Govt.
Govt IT expertise is horrible. They do manage to make systems which are secure but the user interface is usually awful. But maybe they aim them at the wrong people. If you need to create a website for the great unwashed then you have to present just one data field per page 
Also most Govt IT projects suffer from a lack of “buy-in” i.e. they force them on people who don’t see the point and don’t want it and can do their job without it.
Jujupilote wrote:
I think the question of LFHNflightstudent is how does RR file GARs ? Via a proprietary way like Autorouter or via OnlineGAR ?
I would like to know too.
Sorry for unclarity – that is what I meant.
Everything Peter says is absolutely accurate.
The office at border force employs loads of people to take forms that have been emailed and manually enter them into the computer system (lol). If the government were commercial they would have shut down emails and faxes long ago and mandated the XML transaction that we use.
Rocket route works the same way, emails that need to be manually reentered, same as autorouter.
The government have made some odd decisions on this, for sure! They don’t want additional integrators as they simply don’t have the IT support in place to deal with other outside parties. I doubt they would even know how to send out the XML specs let alone test a new integrator.
My history All started with John murray, a private AOPA member. The XML format was developed mutually and developed about 4 years ago. He was running a server and paying for it himself, it became unsustainable and he got very upset by people criticising the apps he wrote. There was no money in it for him; it became unsustainable. I stepped in and tried to put a funding in place that would keep it going, and you could say it’s successful: 3 years on, it’s still running, and it does pay its way. Just.
What the government really wants is for all data to be transactional
What we want is for the government to give us some money and make what they want true. There would almost certainly be a cost benefit due to reduced administration …. but government doesn’t seem to work that way.
carlmeek wrote:
but government doesn’t seem to work that way.
Look on the bright side. If it did, we would never have had Yes, Minister.
And we would have never had the most useful expression for aviation
For what its worth, I use OnlineGAR rather than the free alternatives because OnlineGAR is just…better, and it’s well supported – Carl always responds quickly to queries and anything I’ve found out of order has been fixed quickly, and it just works on all devices. To me that’s worth something. Each GAR I file through OnlineGAR is only about the cost of 2 or 3 minutes of fuel anyway.
carlmeek wrote:
he got very upset by people criticising the apps he wrote.
The criticism was fair, though. The mobile apps were absolutely terrible and the desktop version (it wasn’t really ‘web based’ since it wasn’t at all standards compliant) required Microsoft’s obsolete-when-released Flash knockoff, Silverlight, which meant it only runs on Windows. They were also closed source, so even though I’m a software developer I couldn’t volunteer to help make them any better. It was actually easier to keep on using faxes than use the mobile app. Just because someone does something for free, it doesn’t make them immune from criticism.
alioth wrote:
Microsoft’s obsolete-when-released Flash knockoff, Silverlight, which meant it only runs on Windows.
To be fair, Silverlight is available on Mac OS as well. Not that I disagree otherwise.
As somone who was grateful for the services of online Gar only yesterday, I’m shocked to hear about this threat to it’s existence. For me, Online Gar has taken the pain out of the stupid bureacracy of overseas flights, especially the uncertainty surrounding delivery of faxes or messages via concession airfields to unresponsive and quite possibly incorrect destinations. It would horrifying to go back to that now.
If I sound a little peeved about this, it’s because I am. With good reason.*
*Thread drift. Some years ago, I awoke to the sound of a helicopter hovering in the field outside my bedroom window. My the time I’d thrown on some clothes and got downstairs, my garden was full of Police. And a Police bus parked on the drive. Just as I began wondering exactly how many Police there were, I noticed a long straggly line of dejected Middle Eastern looking men filing one by one along the muddy footpath leading up to my property. A Policeman told me that a lorry driver had turfed them out, pointing to the footpath and saying “This is Birmingham. The Bull Ring is that way”.
The officer told me not to be too concerned about their welfare because they would be taken to a detention centre, fed, asked a few questions and, having no documents, …. Released. This scene has been repeated all over England hundreds, and likely thousands, of times since. How nice it would be if these individually charmng Police officers could concentrate their efforts on searching all the lorries near Dover and sending any occupants straight back where they came from. Instead of wasting resources and helicopter time in country gardens. Or pestering private pilots.
Aveling wrote:
sending any occupants straight back where they came from
To their deaths? You’re OK with that?
Carl, I used OnlineGAR via SD to go to the Scillies in August.
Is a GAR necessary for a flight to the Scillies?
