Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
#1908993
Much as I enjoyed the welcome from the lovely ladies from the Border Force on our return from France yesterday I feel bad that they had to have a day out in the sunshine to no account.

SkyDemon's GAR submission let me down for either the first or second time yesterday (They claimed the outbound hadn't been received either) so I have been having a go at the Govinmnt site, the one that refused to accept that the words 'Robin' and 'Pritchard' were in any way valid when I was struggling with the gov site on a tablet in a French hotel room.

It's nice I can save the aircraft and regular passengers for future use. But what about the based/departure field when there is no ICAO?

I doubt I will ever be able to remember the hangar is at 52.2722 00.1092

Is there a workaround?

Rob P
By Lefty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1908998
Many of us have a copy of the old GAR document in MS Word or MS Excel format - which we populate with all the fixed data - then just add the relevant pax and destination data as required. We then email this document to Border Force and or Police as appropriate - and carry a printed copy with us.

Despite it being a UK based document, many overseas destinations will happily accept it as it contains the data they require.
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#1909006
The nice BF ladies were very sniffy about SkyDemon.

Part of me is minded just to keep on using it and let them worry about having to trek from Norwich to 52.2722 00.1092 every time I return as an incentive for them to work with SD and sort out the issue.

Rob P
By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1909015
Rob P wrote:

> SkyDemon's GAR submission let me down for either the first or second time
> yesterday (They claimed the outbound hadn't been received either)

Out of curiosity - what was the "status" of the requests within the OnlineGAR portal? Been a while since I submitted a GAR.

You can of course use / submit the spreadsheet on the page linked above if you don't like the Gov provided online submission form.
#1909021
Nothing works. Border Farce are exactly that.
I have tried them all..........the Online GAR system submits into a black hole and doesn't leave you with a record of what you submitted. Most unsatisfactory. Especially when they call and accuse you of failing to file anything.
Used to use a form like Lefty. Probably the same one, originally set up by a forumite and shared. Then they got sniffy and demanded we use their "new" form - an abysmally formatted Excel spreadsheet. So we do that and email to NCU.
But that doesn't work properly and we get unending phone calls (or Staverton Tower do) saying that they can "see" a flight on GATE (something internal, I guess) but don't have the details............so they request we email direct to them as well as the NCU. And STILL they don't have the details.
It's no surprise that we have border problems......they simply cannot get a handle on it even when we are all trying to help. What chance do they have of catching illegals?
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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1909027
Skydemon uses onlinegar and that has always worked well for me and I get confirmation so my money is with [usermention=5]@Flyingfemme[/usermention] and the issue is at the border farce end
#1909028
riverrock wrote:
> Out of curiosity - what was the "status" of the requests within the
> OnlineGAR portal?

I couldn't submit on the online portal as I wasn't registered. So I tried to register from the Holiday Inn in Le Touquet on my tablet and for the fields thus

GIVEN NAME: Robin
FAMILY NAME: Pritchard

I was told neither was a "valid" entry. And this was creating a registration remember, not accessing an existing account.

So as I couldn't log in I have no idea what the status was.

However, from the calm of my office desktop this morning I have managed to create an account. My names are suddenly valid. But if as FF says the govt system submissions disappear into a black hole with no acknowledgement, I think I shall stick with SD that at least gives me a submission reference that I can, and did, show to the BF ladies.

Rob P
User avatar
By 2Donkeys
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1909035
Rob P wrote:
> the govt system submissions
> disappear into a black hole with no acknowledgement, I think I shall stick with SD
> that at least gives me a submission reference that I can, and did, show to the BF
> ladies.

Au contraire. The Government portal sends you an email confirmation including the GAR submission reference number. You are equally able to log back into the portal and "Manage" existing GARs - where basic details and references are available to view.
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By Aerotech Flyer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1909044
Well, having been fortunate to do a fair deal of galivanting across borders this year so far, I can confirm much of what has been written above.
Firstly, Border Force does have an issue with the Skydemon submitted GARs and on both occasions that I used them due to changes of plan requiring a resubmitted GAR, they were picked up, but not fully readable and thus resulted in telephone calls from local Border Force officers asking for email copy of a manifest direct to their office.
Second point, I was initially using the excel spreadsheet GAR form downloaded from the gov.uk GAR site, but for certain destinations, the NCU (National Co-ordination Unit) that I emailed them to was being rather oxymoron about it all by not co-ordinating at all! This resulted in being met by police in Derry, who hadn't even heard of the NCU and on another occasion, being chased by staff from ATC after returning to Cov.
Finally, I have settled on only using the online GAR submission itself directly on the gov.uk site. This so far has worked without any incident over the last dozen trips and rather than being a complete black hole, you do receive an email reply to confirm submission, although it only gives you a reference number rather than a copy of your submission. However, all submissions are listed on your log in page (Manage GARs) and can be screen printed if you felt necessary.
Hope that helps,
Cheers AF :salut:
P.S. Top tip: Do fill in the aircraft and passenger details in the regular categories first on the top menu, unless you want to keep repeating your typing.
(Edited to add: 2 Donkeys obviously was typing at same time, so apologies for some info repetition. )
Rob P liked this
By G-JWTP
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1909049
Rob P wrote:
> riverrock wrote:
> > Out of curiosity - what was the "status" of the requests within the
> > OnlineGAR portal?
>
> I couldn't submit on the online portal as I wasn't registered. So I tried to register
> from the Holiday Inn in Le Touquet on my tablet and for the fields thus
>
> GIVEN NAME: Robin
> FAMILY NAME: Pritchard
>
> I was told neither was a "valid" entry. And this was creating a
> registration remember, not accessing an existing account.
>
> So as I couldn't log in I have no idea what the status was.
>
> However, from the calm of my office desktop this morning I have managed to create an
> account. My names are suddenly valid. But if as FF says the govt system submissions
> disappear into a black hole with no acknowledgement, I think I shall stick with SD
> that at least gives me a submission reference that I can, and did, show to the BF
> ladies.
>
> Rob P

Some times tablets do an ' auto fill' ie you just start to type in something and it finishes it for you or it appears somewhere on the screen and you touch it.

Some systems don't accept this , no idea why.

Just type in the details in full or detete the last character and retype it.

G-JWTP
User avatar
By Dave W
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1909051
Use the postcode rather than the lat/long. You can put that in Remarks on the gov.uk site IIRC* and there's a specific field for it in the SkyDemon/OnlineGAR implementation.

There's also an option in the airport name field to select a generic private airfield (start typing "General Aviation airfield" or "private airfield" (I think) and it'll appear as an autocomplete option. Sorry, can't currently be more specific because the previous post on here that solved that seems to be one lost in the forum changes, and I can't get on the gov.uk site to check just now - see below!


Just tried to confirm and the 2-factor authentication is throwing a wobbly. Thankfully this isn't for real, with weather closing in and the need to submit 2 hours before my European departure...
User avatar
By Aerotech Flyer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1909054
That reminds me about the online GAR authentication. You enter your account email and on each login they send the authentication code back to your email account. Quite often this ends up straight in the spam folder, so always check there if you don't get a reply within a minute or two! Obviously gov.uk is a dodgy site to email servers! :roll: :?