This one is doing the UK social media right now. From one site:
Strictly speaking, it was always a requirement to provide a GENDEC to the Belgian police before flying to or from Belgium, but in practice, nobody seemed to mind. Only Antwerp in my experience used to insist, and you could always fill the form in on arrival.
Well now, there is an internet site on which you must pre-file your details ahead of your flight
http://www.generaldeclaration.be/
Clearly, the immigration/customs requirement is supposedly in the AIP, for each airport (except in Germany and possibly Italy) in which case this looks like some initiative to concentrate the notification interface.
Nobody flying to Belgium?
Well, yes, occasionally. But most come from NL, FR or GE…
Anyway, what’s the deal? While this is certainly implemented in a less bureaucratic way (for pilots) in say Germany (no need to send anything beforehand at most airports) I guess that every country is free to decide what they require for non-Schengen or non-EU flights. And clearly, Belgium wants the data beforehand. Where that’s the case, I rather would have one single platform for all airports than different procedures for each of them. (This also makes it much easier for SD and the likes to implement this into their software, as an automatic thing. SD does this, so 90% of the UK private pilots are also sorted).
Fully agree. No news as far as regulatory requirements are concerned.
Just an efficient way to implement these, even of used directly online.
And will allow for easy integration in various pilot tools.
PS in this and in other threads I get the diatinct feeling that non-EU non-Schengen pilots gradually begin to realize that it is in fact more convenient to be in rathwr than out ;-)
Only if you equate “convenient” with “not getting shafted by some official who got a bad night’s sleep”
Schadenfreude rarely looks attractive
UK pilots have been dealing with the non-schengen situation since for ever. Now they will have to exercise additional due diligence dealing with non-customs – as per the other thread.
Is this gateway operated by the Belgian government? It is headed Federal Police, so it looks official. I am just amazed they implemented it, just for these few applicable airports
EBAW ANTWERPEN / Deurne
EBBR BRUSSELS / Brussels-National
EBCI CHARLEROI / Brussels South
EBKT KORTRIJK-WEVELGEM / Wevelgem
EBLG LIEGE / Bierset
EBOS OOSTENDE-BRUGGE / Oostende
The real question is will GENDEC sent via that central official website means “you complied” and what about by email to the local guys ?
AFAIK for UK GAR, the central ncu email/fax route will be decommissioned by 2020 and we have to use automated way probably a junky gov website (but hopefully https://www.onlinegar.com will keep working)
It does look official, but with what happened in Germany all bets are off on the meaning of “official”.
Not sure, I follow here.
One of the key lessons learnt in the other thread should be, that a guy at the phone/mike of a small airfield is no more official than you or the next pilot landing there.
(and AFAIK that is similar across Europe) So “someone” telling you, it’s OK is not an official blessing.
The AIP has clumsy language, agreed.
The expectation with this Belgian site would certainly be that it is 100% official.
The most likely candidate for using it would be a non schengen (e.g. UK) based pilot, and it would be interesting to get any feedback e.g. whether there is an acknowledgement received.
IMHO, you are not entitled to any such expectation of using any 3rd party method (e.g. Skydemon, Autorouter, etc) to transmit the “gendec”.
The site was presented during a pilot meeting beginning this year by a border control police officer. So I think you can safely assume it is genuine.
The reason was the increase in human trafficking between Belgium/North of France & UK.