Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By Tim Dawson
SkyDemon developer
#1620280
In a recent update to SkyDemon we've reworked the pilot feedback and notes functionality to make it much easier to discover airfields based on things like fuel prices, runway characteristics and presence of food.

I've long wanted to add presence of customs/immigration to the list of facilities we map (and you can filter by) but I wanted to first make sure I do it in a way that helps people. The "presence of food" flag is very simple: when you submit feedback about an airfield, you answer Yes, No or Don't Know to the presence of food and from the submissions made by dozens of pilots we can gather an accurate answer.

What I need to know is, should I include a simple "Customs/Immigration" flag with the same Yes, No or Don't Know options or should I perhaps split them out into separate options, with choices for both Customs and Immigration. The former is what I'm leaning towards and wins in terms of simplicity, but I suppose the latter may be strictly more accurate. The idea is that once the data is in, you'll be able to highlight airfields on the map by whether they have the facilities or not. Even then, there are often caveats to the ones which do offer the facilities (such as 24hr notice required) which isn't in the scope of what I'm thinking of here. The user would be expected to ascertain the level of service offered themselves once they've seen that the service is available.

Apologies for the slightly self-promoting nature of this post.
mmcp42 liked this
#1620283
Hi Tim

A great enhancement however as always the devil is in the detail.

For example I think food (hot cooked food) should be split out from snacks (chocolate bars, crisps, biscuits etc.) I am not sure where sandwiches and rolls would fit and drinks but I suppose this can all be resolved with notes in the plate for the airfield giving further details.

For GA purposes a flag to highlight whether there is a border force certificate of agreement in force would be a handy flag to have in addition to formal customs/immigration facilities. Again the notes in the plate could resolve the local arrangements for example 24 hours notice etc.

I am however wondering whether these flags should be set using the "airfield owner" access rather than take a consensus view from feedback given by individual users ?
User avatar
By Tim Dawson
SkyDemon developer
#1620287
As you point out, the devil is always in the detail. Rather than make stuff too complicated we try to provide something useful (is food available?) and leave it to the user to then further filter based on their own criteria, asking the airfield or reviewing notes written by other pilots etc.

SkyDemon does actually include data on the certificate of agreement stuff in order to generate its GAR required warning, but this isn't exposed anywhere.

Good point about the airfield owner stuff. We're only just bringing this online, and it's the case that where an airfield has been "adopted" by its owner, then only the owner gets to set the availability of facilities rather than crowd-sourcing them. We'll see how this develops as various people adopt their airfields!
By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1620296
On Customs / Immigration - I thought it was more about whether an airport is international, has a certificate of agreement (etc) rather than whether you actually see someone from Border Force (or the French equivalent) when you go to/from Northern Ireland, France (etc), or whether they were friendly.
As that info should be available publicly already, it would be better to get it from source rather than user feedback? For this, I wouldn't be able to rely on user feedback for that information, so it wouldn't be any use to me. There is a danger that (eg in France) if customs was withdrawn at short notice, you could turn up somewhere you shouldn't if you relied on the user feedback.

Its a bit different from food. For that - user feedback is important, as knowing more than opening times (which would be useful!) is essential :)
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By Tim Dawson
SkyDemon developer
#1620330
Well, we're trying to make a customs availability map scoped to the entirety of Europe, but that sort of thing, yes.
kanga liked this