UK GAR – single point(s) of submission for email and fax?
I am not sure if I am reading this right, but on the new June 2014 notes, on page 4, it says
which suggests that the old system where you (in some cases) had to fax the GAR to the local police force, is now gone and has been replaced with a single email and, as an alternative, a single fax number.
Have I got it right?
The old individual police fax numbers were a right pain because half of them didn’t work at any given time.
They do say you can still use the old police numbers
but nobody in their right mind is going to do that.
I may be wrong but I don’t think that an email to NCU will be directed to the correct police unit. The only “all in one stop shop” is online GAR or via AOPA website
NCU is a misleading name in that it only dispatches to the relevant HMRC and UKBF functions.
It does not cover police agencies.
According to Peter’s extract the situation may have changed.
The last sentence of my second screenshot is pretty clear!
The old situation, with faxing individual forces, was a complete farce a lot of the time.
The other notable angle here is that it is unlikely that the UK would be able to force all foreign pilots to use a pay website to submit GARs – irrespective of how good that website is and irrespective of how much added value it gives. The UK will IMHO have to maintain an email facility at least. And fax remains widely used in the airport scene for stuff like PPR. There are airports (Corfu, Zaragoza are two I recall) where I would not dream of flying to without a stamped and signed fax permission in my hand (OK… a PDF, received by email from a fax2email gateway, of their reply fax will do fine and that is how one deals with this nowadays). Loads of emails are undelivered – even here on EuroGA maybe 10% of members’ profile emails are duff or their server bounces back almost anything.
We had the same with the AFPEX debacle. It was “hoped” that all flight plan filing will go through that, and then somebody realised that, ahem, there is aviation activity outside the UK and, hey, some of that even flies into the UK! And, god forbid, some of it even flies back out again. None of these pilots could get AFPEX accounts (you need a UK address to get one). So NATS have to keep the AFPEX helpdesk open and able to receive flight plans conventionally (emailed PDF, fax, etc).
no more flying between a “strip” and a non EU (or C.I.) airport
Indeed, but there has been no change to this policy which has been here as long as I can remember.
Not sure why they omitted IoM which is outside the UK and the EU.
The last sentence of my second screenshot is pretty clear!
Aha! I will check with my colleague in AOPA to verify this as the relevant government bodies have been known to publish various conflicting and unclear information, partly because they don’t know what they are meant to be doing themselves.
NATS have to keep the AFPEX helpdesk open
Well the “parental unit” help desk wanted me to ask the airport to file my flight plan…
Isle of Man has Customs and Excise in common (common purse agreement) with the UK, the Channel Islands do not (no VAT). The IOM is still not in the EU, but it can trade with the EU through Protocol 3. That’s why the IOM was not included with the CI
Aha! I will check with my colleague in AOPA to verify this as the relevant government bodies have been known to publish various conflicting and unclear information, partly because they don’t know what they are meant to be doing themselves.
Exactly what I thought. Quite possibly just another of those screw-ups.
Years ago, we used to get a new GAR form and instructions every two years or so. Recently, it has become more like 6 months. Now, they seem to change it every two month or do. These people seem to be totally helpless and clueless. A great shame.
