autorouter informs the authorities about delays and cancellations of flight plans where a GAR was submitted. That means they get a lot of messages from us but nobody has every objected to that — quite the contrary actually.
We’ve handled thousands of GARs with no issue. Well, there was one issue but that eventually resulted in an apology by the BF 
In general, the UK GAR is a very well working system.
I don’t know why they want a cancellation notification since the police has instant access to flight plans.
Maybe not all flights that require a GAR also require a flight plan?
It is correct that not all flights that require a GAR also require a flight plan: A VFR flight from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland requires a GAR. It may be advisable to also file a VFR flight plan, but it is not a legal requirement as far as I am aware. (Skydemon also doesn’t suggest filing a flight plan, but it does say that a GAR is required at least 12 hours beforehand.)
Perhaps Northern Ireland is unique in this regard.
I think a flight plan isn’t required from Great Britain (or Northern Ireland) to the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands either, but they do require a GAR.
Peter wrote:
Maybe not all flights that require a GAR also require a flight plan?
CTA flights (except ones that cross the Shannon FIR) do not need a flight plan.
I don’t think I’ve ever departed at the time that I’ve said on the GAR (for a CTA flight). This is because they require them 12 hours in advance so they aren’t going to get anything more than a guess. Since you can’t update them, I don’t, and sometimes I’ve been several hours later than the time on the GAR. No one has complained.
OnlineGAR, under threat
Because of the nice comments on another thread about OnlineGAR, i feel i’d like to share with you the threat to OnlineGAR.
About a year ago the government decided they needed a free GAR service for everyone. Something I completely agree with – it doesn’t really make any sense for it to be a chargeable service. However, in their infinite wisdom, and despite several great contacts in the organisation, they decided to create a new eGAR project and award it to the same developer they use for their internal system.
The internal system is called CBP, it’s the one that OnlineGAR feeds into. It’s old fashioned, only works on internet explorer, and is just generally awful.
Many months on, I understand the eGAR project in it’s initial form has collapsed. The software did not deliver.
So, in their infinite wisdom they’ve instead decided to develop a whole new GAR portal from scratch internally, probably using the same team that developed the awful websites that run most of the government these days. Think enormous fonts and systems designed for idiots, with one field per screen data entry!
So – the future for OnlineGAR is pretty bleak. Government sponsorship now seems impossible. The money we get in from the people who are happy to pay just about buys me a meal out at a restaurant every month, and usage has flattened off. The majority of GAR forms are free, covered by SkyDemon and AOPA, who pay a very small amount in the overall scheme of things.
Usage is high, however : here are a couple of stats:
There are 15909 users. 11 registered in the last 24H.
Saved are 47033 Forms, 47836 Pax, 13911 Aircraft, 1678 Custom sites. 48 Forms in the last 24H.
People have logged in 185 times in the last 24H. 53 times in the last Hour.
Luckily, I have a day job that pays the bills, but it’s still sad to captain a sinking ship, even if it won’t kill me on the way down.
Carl,
What you have is a value proposition.
Dear pilot,
You can get crap from the Government or you pay me £3 a pop. Yer pays yer money and yer makes yer choice.
That way, no-one (such as AOPA) can complain that there’s no free service, and people can choose your 1st Class or the Government’s 3rd Class – just see what happens.
(However, £9 for a Navajo, as I just paid does seem a little steep 
)
See how it goes. You might eat out twice a month.
carlmeek wrote:
covered by SkyDemon and AOPA, who pay a very small amount in the overall scheme of things
So make them pay more. SkyDemon is a money printing business and GARs are important for their users. You have monopolized the transaction based interface to the UK administration, something which I personally never thought was right.
Entrepreneurs don’t whine btw
Ha ha, sorry, didn’t mean to Whine!
We actually have not monopolised it – there are still plenty of other routes of filing GAR forms. The only way we would have been allowed to monopolise would be if it was completely free to all – and that could only happen if the government sponsored it.
I feel frustrated, and hoped that – 3 years on – things would have changed, but they’re all pretty much the same as they were. As Timothy pointed out, the prices are high, and I don’t really like that fact – but overall income is low. If it was not about 3 large customers, the whole thing would be a total waste of time.
I have periodically thought of the idea of just making it all free, but then i’d be paying for the servers out of my own pocket, and not having a nice meal out every month, so would i bother to continue at all? Probably not.
The business model, and idea from the very start, was that it should be free to all end users. Countless meetings have been spent wooing the government, but to no avail.
Anyway, enough whining, i’ve got a proper business to run :-)
