I’ve also never sent them an Excel file.
It’s a daft idea. There are so many .xls .xlsx etc formats, and that’s before you get onto the “open source” software which has various incompatibilites with M$ stuff.
Also an Excel (or Word) file is much more likely to be infected than a PDF. It is a security nightmare. If I was the sysadmin for the recipient of a large number of M$ docs from the public I would dump them into a VM which has no LAN or internet access and which itself gets dumped after every document has been opened (and the data extracted with some means which cannot carry a virus). This is exactly what one does for running keygens 
which one must assume are infected.
Today on my trip to Kortrijk EBKT I had yet another GAR form not reach the people.
Apparently the email to use is [email protected] and NOT [email protected].
Unfortunately the old address does NOT bounce! The stuff just disappears.
They were very good about it. I emailed it to them when I got home.
Peter wrote:
Today on my trip to Kortrijk EBKT I had yet another GAR form not reach the people.
Apparently the email to use is [email protected] and NOT [email protected].
Out of interest, how did they contact you to say you had not sent the form to the right email ?
By which I mean if they didnt get the form how did they know about you…if you see what I mean…
Regards, SD..
Usually that’s from either your flight plan or the airport calls them because the police have an agreement where they inform the airport about flights they’ve been notified about, and expect the airport to tell them about any other international flights.
how did they contact you to say you had not sent the form to the right email ?
The police called the tower and the guy there has my number and sent me an SMS.
It is unbelievable stupid for the govt to let a duff email address carry on. They should set up either forwarding or if they can’t be bothered at least an auto responder.
Mind you, most big firms are just as dumb, in letting email addresses of ex employees in Sales go dead…
From here
Peter wrote:
Can you use the GAR form at all of these? In principle the UK supports customs/immigration at every location, via the GAR form, but there are some variations which I can never remember. I know for the CTA (C.I Ireland IOM) farm strips are not usually supported unless a special deal is done with the police, and then it tends to be 24hr PN. For EU flights… not sure.
Basically you can use the GAR to arrive at any location if you’re coming from the EU.
If you’re not coming from the EU (the Channel Islands are not in the EU), or you’re coming from the CTA (Northern Ireland, Ireland, Isle of Man) then it needs to be a ‘Certificate of Agreement’ airfield. I can do the Channel Islands from Waltham, but not from Enstone.
Peter wrote:
I know for the CTA (C.I Ireland IOM) farm strips are not usually supported
Farm strips are absolutely supported. File the GAR, and you’re good to go. 12 hours notice, which is ridiculous, though. It’s well over a decade since they required 24 hours notice, and to my knowledge special deals with the police have never been required (certainly, the law hasn’t required them). To be honest, I wish they would shorten it to 1 hour (for the Isle of Man, no landing site is more than 20 minutes from a police station) or maybe even just a notification before you leave if you’re Mode-S equipped.
Graham wrote:
or you’re coming from the CTA (Northern Ireland, Ireland, Isle of Man) then it needs to be a ‘Certificate of Agreement’ airfield
That’s not true for the IOM or Northern Ireland. You can fly to any airfield by filing a GAR 12 hours in advance. You can fly to certain airfields from NI/IOM without filing a GAR at the UK end at all (e.g. Gloucester, Blackpool, Carlisle to name three). You absolutely can fly from Enstone to the Isle of Man, or Enstone to Newtonards, or from a farm strip like Glenswinton in Scotland to Andreas IOM if you file the GAR 12 hours in advance (acutally, if you notify a police officer in writing 12 hours in advance – you could technically drop a note to your local police officer and you’ll be fulfilling legal requirements, but you’d probably get hassle for it). NI/IOM the notification is only required for the Prevention of Terror Act, and nothing else.
I’ve been making flights to/from the Isle of Man to all sorts of places in the UK without trouble for years (as has pretty much everyone who flies here). I usually use OnlineGAR the evening before. I seldom use the ‘notified airfields’, almost always flying directly from farm strip (Andreas) to farm/club strip in the UK or Northern Ireland. Occasionally, the police have even shown up (although the last time was over 10 years ago now).
The difference with the Channel Islands is that they need customs. NI and IOM are in the same customs area as the UK.
Alioth is absolutely correct. I fly all over Europe and the CTA to and from our own grass strip and am well known to Customs and Special Branch with never an issue. As always one needs to understand what the law actually prescribes and not necessarily what may have been said by a perhaps less well informed official.
