It's an interesting debate what one might do in this scenario.
I would bet that they would disable read confirmations, otherwise you get a situation where the pilot got the confirmation and took it as a GO despite not having complied with say the PNR period, or despite an error on his GAR.
It would be difficult to take legal (criminal) action in such a case.
It's just like the case where you ask the CAA if you can fly a Mongolian reg Learjet 45, single pilot, with one engine INOP, on the NPPL, in Class A, VFR, and some low level person there says Yes, they will never be able to prosecute you for any offence you commit prior to them catching you (subsequent ones, yes). This (well not exactly the Mongolian stuff etc) has happened a number of times.
So I think somebody in the border agency (perhaps running spot checks) is running an unauthorised copy of Outlook 
I would bet that they would disable read confirmations
Exactly, thats what you would think. Thats why I do the same as the fact I have read something doesnt imply I agree to the contents, or I will be be taking any action upon a request :-)
It's just like the case where you ask the CAA if you can fly a Mongolian reg Learjet 45, single pilot, with one engine INOP, on the NPPL, in Italian Class A, VFR, and some low level person there says Yes
Its almost worth the phone call just to see what they say :-)
I'd do it, and see it is a 'must' rather than a 'request'
Somehow that doesn't sound like good advice...
Stop over briefly at Cherbourg instead to reduce this 12-hour notification requirement down to 4.
That kind of makes sense - following the letter rather than the spirit of the law.
Anyway, if they want 12hrs before "arrival" at Biggin, you will meet that easily because you will be going to Jersey and back first.
Annoyingly no - I wouldn't know whether or not I was going until 2PM or so, and would depart about 4 to be back around 8:30.
I guess the 'right' thing to do here is to file a speculative GAR on the off chance and cancel it later.
Maybe the wonderful new GAR API could be used to automate this - the cartesian product of destinations, likely passengers and possible arrival times is surely within the capacity of their system ;-) (say 3 destinations in the CI, 12 possible arrival times, 4 likely passengers in a plane with 3 seats - gives 504 submissions)
I file electronically (it worries about who to send it to) and you have irrefutable proof it was sent. All possible passengers and the most likely time. I then have the number for Border Force Farnborough and call them if there is a meaningful change.
I'd do it, and see it is a 'must' rather than a 'request'
Somehow that doesn't sound like good advice...
Just out of interest, why doesnt that sound like good advice? What I said was maybe misunderstood. I was advocating filling in the form based on the OP's comment quotation from the border force website that says "but are requested to submit a GAR at least 12 hours prior to arrival to..."., and consider it a 'must do' rather than 'request to' complete the form.
I guess the 'right' thing to do here is to file a speculative GAR on the off chance and cancel it later.
Can you actually cancel them? I know if you do it online with that new system you can (I recall there is a constructed URL that caters for this). But if you send it via email, your only way of cancelling it to forward the sent email back to them saying I no longer plan to do this flight. But is that actually required? Maybe like a flight plan, if you dont activate it, or nothing triggers its activation in the GAR monitoring station (if there is one), then maybe you dont need to cancel it? I dont know, but I am curious nonetheless...
Don't bother to cancel a GAR, or anything like that. One cannot cancel as such anyway. Anybody who wants to meet you will know GA flying is extremely wx sensitive. They have access to the flight plan database and they will check that first, then check with the tower. They don't want to hang around for hours for nothing. If in doubt, file the GAR for the earliest likely time of the flight.
I put "times approximate, due to weather" on the GAR and have been doing that for 12 years now, often changing flight times by several hours.
I've been met on several occasions:
Back from Jersey, no GAR filed (an error on the GAR notes for Shoreham permitted this, but the police couldn't care less about that even when I showed it to them), a 3hr interview/lecture
Back from San Sebastian (back when SS had Customs), a day after a bomb went off there; they indirectly asked if I had done it (very polite; asked what documents one is supposed to carry so I showed them)
Back from Croatia, the chap was very polite, no apparent reason for the interview
and maybe a few others I don't recall.
I had an 'interesting' experience with GAR submission at the start of July. I filed a GAR for a return from Nantes and also filed an outbound even though this isn't required.
The GAR was submitted via the online tool and I had the relevant confirmation numbers. When we landed back in Bournemouth on the Saturday morning we picked up various voice mails that had been received in flight, from the flying club, saying they had 'customs' on the phone because the relevant 'paper work' had not been submitted. 'Customs' never did actually show up, even though our arrival time was pretty accurate, but I did wonder why they would call the flying club, instead of me, when my number was provided on the GAR form, along with all the other information... I am presuming that they saw an inbound flight plan somewhere but took a while to match it to the GAR and decided to have a little flap whilst they figured it out.
This was my first time using the online GAR, so wondered if anyone else had seen spurious results?
I had one once not be received - apparently this is usually them forgetting to check the right system. Good thing is if you submit it, that becomes their problem not yours. I showed my receipt and he was fine.
Maybe the wonderful new GAR API
I've not come across any details on the API -- have you seen them?
There is a GAR app for smart phones and website but both are shockingly, awfully bad. The iPhone app is literally the most terrible user interface I've seen since ...well, I don't think I've encountered many user interfaces that were worse. Then not only does the web based one use the nasty, proprietary, Microsoft-only Flash knock-off Silverlight for something that should be achievable with a straightforward "web 1.0" HTML form, the author then whines about how smartphones can't run the app because "they don't support the app engine he used and smartphone makers want to force you to use their app store". Had he just used a simple HTML form (or even HTML5 if he really wanted to be fancy) none of this would have been an issue.
