Customs-induced get-there-itis

For me any type of get-there-itis is the same and I refuse to fall under its pressure. I’ve been successful in it for many years and I hope I won’t give in.

Father forgive me for I have sinned

The UK has set up a poor situation with the change from notification to customs for arrival.
Originally to be made 2hrs before arrival now changed to 2hrs before departure.
This means you cannot absorb flight time into your retun trip.
So Originally your return trip is 1hr, basically you’re working at a 1 hr margin. If something changes or the wx you’ve been keeping an eye-on begins to chaange more rapidly than forcast or it’s less benign than forcast, you can’t as easily change your plans.

A genuine example was that we visited LFAT from the UK, about a 40 min flight.
The wx in the UK was poor but flyable and predicted to remain so.
In LFAT we had glorious warm sunshine.
While having dinner, I checked the wx again and saw the metars at my ‘observation’ airfields in the UK were showing much worse wx than originally predicted. I quickly rebooked the customs, and headed for LFAT for departure. We departed allowing for landing back a couple of mins early. All worked well.
With the new plan we are required to wait on the ground an additional 2hrs from the new notification.
On arival at base having travelled in VFR conditions we were able to land safely as there was a huge gap in the worsening wx. We had about 20 mins to see customs, put the aircraft covers on and empty our kit before the heavens opened for the rest of the day.
We are IFR capable so no real danger but I can’t help thinking that for some, missing work on Monday morning and an additional unplanned overnight will definitely add pressure for get-home-itis.
It’s generally easier ‘mentally’ to cancel the trip if you’re at base than it is when returning, I think.

Jujupilote wrote:

What can be done about that risk factor ?

Finally EASA and the FAA should step in and declare this whole PPR B/S a safety risk and unnecessary harassment of flight crews. It would be interesting to compile a statistic on how many flights went into incident or even accident mode due to their attempt to keep customs or other slots or to avoid airports which have priced out parts of aviation. I am sure that there are quite a few incidents the very least or narrowly avoided accidents when people pushed on to satisfy paper pushers.

I have not used an arm watch for about two decades. But lately when flying I got that thing out again. It is set to UTC and I started to wear it before departure. Contrary to the some old school pilots who might do important stuff with it in flight I put it and my pocket after take off.

Unfortunately when doing more advanced trips there is little understanding for the requirements of this kind of flying. You have departure slots which are heavily enforced, customs, border patrol, handling agents, airport opening times etc. and everybody expects you to operate like a machine on time.

Unfortunately I see little which can be done to change the system. But as a pilot we can get better by observing our past flights. How long did we really take to start up, taxi etc.? Then we can often schedule future flights such that things work out much better and more relaxed. Much stress comes from bad planning right from the start.

Just to give an example as US customs was mentioned above. They usually give you a window of +/- 30 minutes. So why give them your exact best case arrival time? Rather give them 15 minutes or so later. In reality how often have you really been much earlier compared to being late? And in the rare case you end up being really early, you can still pull back the power much easier than you could ever accelerate.

Jujupilote wrote:

The second is Flightchops : (…) He states in the video that he would have waited better weather if he had not had a US CBP appointment.

Pilots from (North) America tend to have a quite submissive attitute towards officials, partly like a Stockholm syndrome.

Jujupilote wrote:

Has it happened to you ?

This year, I had to divert my route from Italy to Switzerland once, so I couldn´t make it to my destination with customs appointment in time. I called FIS in-air and asked them to inform customs about my delay. They did that and after a few minutes, FIS told me that customs replied with a “its ok”. Life can be easy if you communicate.

Frans wrote:

Pilots from (North) America tend to have a quite submissive attitute towards officials, partly like a Stockholm syndrome.

I can understand US and to some degree Canadian customs are serious compared to European customs and immigration (they do not differenciate it is one process for both). Just to give some examples in the US you have to taxi to a special customs apron with a yellow line around it, you are not allowed to even open the door before the agent did inspect the aircraft from the outside etc. If you call them to arrange for a delay, I did and it was no issue, they give you their initials to write down. In Canada if they do decide not to check you (does not exist in the US) they do not simply not show up as in the UK, they give you a clearance number to write down.In the US they took our garbage with some minimal remains of the catering and put it in a special fenced place with a big oven inside. Apparently the “international waste” gets burned right there.

So I can fully understand pilots are a bit nervous about North American customs procedures. Though I have to say that all the custom agents I have met so far have been very friendly and the process has been efficient and smooth

Sebastian_G wrote:

Unfortunately I see little which can be done to change the system.

The only way I see is to make it a safety case with EASA. Whether this has been tried before I don’t know, but I’ve had some discussions here with people who are in that system and they thought it might be the only way to get attention.

However, there might be the danger that if EASA were to put a stop to this or at least make some ruling that requires more flexibility, that the addressed parties simply would withdraw the service altogether. That is particularly possible with customs, who are a kingdom within their own organisation most of the time. Airport slots and outpricing however might be attacked via this way .

Frans wrote:

Pilots from (North) America tend to have a quite submissive attitute towards officials, partly like a Stockholm syndrome.

Hardly because of a Stockholm syndrome but out of experience. US law enforcement and customs can be REALLY tough on people if you fall foul of them, as nice and kind as they can be if you play by the rules. And particularly recently, lots of people forego travel into the US at all, as they are not prepared to risk detention even though they follow the process to the letter or to let themselves be stressed by that system. With the most recent restrictions and requirements put in place by the current administration, it is perfectly clear that they wish to make entry to the US as difficult as they can without shutting it off altogether or making it available only for “golden ticket” holders.

I would not call this a Stockholm syndrome, as that implies that people see this kind of behavior as normal or even approve of it. That’s not the case at all with most people. Likewise, I have not met many pilots succumbing to a Stockholm syndrome attitude in Europe either, nobody I know finds any benefit or finds the way GA is expelled, harassed and bullied by airports being public infrastructure correct or even beneficial. That people are careful not to fall foul of particularly customs is not without reason: Customs can get VERY nasty if you don’t follow their instructions to the letter. And paper pushers at airports will go into overdrive if they can sanction someone who has fallen foul of airport slots or similar things. And lastly, in recent times there are more and more people who understandably avoid high cost IFR places and will scud run into small GA fields, which is a massive increase of risk.

For me the question asked in the original post here is one of those which make me question the viability of GA as a whole in Europe.

In general, outbound one has to be careful because you land somewhere in “foreign land”, funny language and it is easy to end up over the barrel.

Diversions have routinely been used for smuggling (because the police can’t get to the new destination before the contraband has been unloaded) so the police get super excited if you divert somewhere, especially where no police presence is published (like e.g. most of France).

Inbound i.e. coming back home I could not care less because a) they have access to flight plans, tracking sites, etc, so anybody with an IQ of 20+ (not always assured with the 9mm carrying police generally, and UK Border Force especially) can work out that you will be returning late. I never notify the BF of a later arrival.

Anyone flying GA to the US will know what they are doing…