Thanks Peter. The BF people have now told me that at least part of the problem is that “their system” doesnt properly recognise ZZZZ airstrips and GARs with these get shunted off “to a place we can’t access” .
Just as one small data point. I still use OnlineGAR. And it does seem to work fine.
Last year, I flew into Pent Farm (also ZZZZ) and all went smoothly. I landed, and Border Force was waiting for me, so they have clearly received the info. Brief check of the passport, a short chat and that was it.
I’ve used the UK Government portal too in the past, without much problem.
As I understand it both the UK Government portal and Online GAR both feed into the same computer system (API). So what happens on Border Force / Special Branch side will be the same with both systems.
Personally I wouldn’t worry too much about it, beyond making sure you’ve kept a copy of the confirmation message. Everything after that is their problem.
OnlineGAR
I went to France last week, filed flightplan and onlineGAR from skydemon.
Arrived in France to a very cross customs agent, claiming we were nearly 2 hours late. I had already delayed our arrival. thought nothing of it until our departure on Tuesday morning, arrived at the airport to customs agent claiming that our departure time had passed. she pointed at the (auto) email they had received from online GAR showing our departure time BUT with no reference to that time being in UTC. (ie she was expecting that the email showed local time!).
I have emailed Carl and online gar with no response and Skydemon, who refer me back to online GAR.
Surely I’m not the only one who has experienced this? how can i get in touch wtih online gar to have this fixed? I’ve had no reply from Carl and both the support@ and apps@ onlinegar bounce back.
Strange you got no reply from Carl.
Anyway, OnlineGAR (and therefore also Skydemon) should NOT be firing off any autmomted emails to French customs. At least, it should be user-configurable to be turned off.
Many French customs agencies now require the information on their own forms, so these mails will do nothing good anyway!
There is no option to turn off the emails from online GAR. In their “where it goes” section:
https://www.onlinegar.com/support.olg?opt=whereitgoes
“An automatic email is sent to some airports where we have their email address on file. Notes provided here on customs are our best knowledge but the status may have changed – you MUST check the AIP before travelling.”
In my case, at La Rochelle, it appears they relied SOLELY on that email – and pointed to it to me both inbound AND outbound – with the time showing as local time, not as UTC (though this should show the correct local time).
@carlmeek is around…
UK GAR form filing services are for filing the UK GAR to UK agencies and are unlikely to know the details of airport PNs especially French ones and even more especially the notorious La Rochelle which is 48hrs (the police there think it is 24hrs 
). LR doesn’t need a form AFAICT but you do need to phone them to make sure they got the email; read the end of that thread.
There is no app or service which will route PN / PPR data to airports and related agencies like immigration or customs. You have to send these off yourself.
vmc-on-top wrote:
no reference to that time being in UTC
It might be a Skydemon or device issue. I used to have trouble filing flightplans, where it would use ‘ipad system time’ unless manually changed to UTC. To be fair, it hasn’t happened since 2018 though.
I thought Skydemon just sent flight plans which have nothing to do with C+I PN. So who informed C+I that the aircraft would arrive at a particular time UTC and not Local. Surely it would be best to include both in the missive.
This one has already been done to death on Flyer Forum, he must have his answers from that or is the OP trying to have dig at Carl ?
Is it too much effort to look at the AIP and (as well as OnlineGAR) send immigration an email stating arrival times in UTC and Local, POB etc / 2 minutes max
The email address for immigration is easy to find for LFBH from the AIP
