Border Force GAR: filing for flights in and out of the UK

If you've promised a friend lunch in Le Touquet on Saturday, there's a form to file first. Every general aviation flight into or out of the UK needs a general aviation report (GAR) filed with Border Force between 48 and 2 hours before departure. That includes Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Ireland, and for a lot of those flights the deadline moves to 12 hours. Times go in as UTC. An extra passenger, or a delay that slips into the next day, means a fresh report.

It's much less fiddly once you know what goes where. This guide covers UK law and Home Office guidance as we checked it on 9 November 2026.

Who files, and when#

The rules come from the General Aviation (Persons on Board, Flight Information and Civil Penalties) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/470). They apply to any GA aircraft expected to arrive in or leave the UK, and that includes flights inside the Common Travel Area (the UK, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Ireland). Under regulation 4, the "responsible person" must send details of the flight and everyone on board no earlier than 48 hours and no later than 2 hours before the aircraft is expected to depart. Get it wrong and a breach can bring a civil penalty of up to £10,000.

Paragraph 27BA of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 says who the responsible persons are: the owner or agent of the aircraft, and the captain. On a club aircraft, the owner (the club, its company or its trustees, depending on how the aircraft is held) carries the duty alongside the member who's flying. It's easy for a committee to miss that.

Where to file#

Regulation 5 allows two routes, and only two:

• the free Border Force service, Submit a General Aviation Report (sGAR).
• An application or direct system connection the Home Office has approved and listed on GOV.UK. Third-party apps may charge. Check the GOV.UK list before you rely on one, because your flight planning app may not be on it.

Email, fax and phone reports aren't accepted. The one exception, in regulation 5(2), is when sGAR itself has failed. Then you can use the phone number or email address the Home Office publishes for that.

Filing in sGAR, step by step#

1. Collect everything in the table below, travel documents included.
2. Sign in to sGAR with a GOV.UK One Login (create one if you don't have it).
3. Enter the flight and each person on board in the web form, or upload the GAR spreadsheet template from GOV.UK.
4. Submit inside the window: 48 to 2 hours before departure, or 48 to 12 hours if the flight also needs police notice.
5. Watch for the Home Office's confirmation, through the route you filed by, of whether each person holds a valid permission to travel. Don't carry anyone without one.
6. Stay reachable. Regulation 5(3) requires you to be contactable on the phone number or email address you gave until the aircraft departs, so give a number you'll actually answer at the hold.
7. If plans change, sGAR lets you view, edit or cancel a GAR. The table under "When plans change" shows when you need a new one.

What you need to enter#

The Schedule to the regulations sets out the list.

Places go in as an ICAO or IATA code. YYYY and ZZZZ aren't accepted, so a farm strip with no code goes in as a WGS84 latitude and longitude. If you need a code, the airfield lookup will find it.

There's a shortcut for some passengers. On a flight between the UK and elsewhere in the Common Travel Area, British and Irish citizens only need their name, sex, date of birth and nationality, with no travel document details (regulation 2(4)). Everyone else on that flight still gives the full set.

Two things are easy to get wrong. Times are UTC, so a 1000 departure in May, when the UK is on BST, goes on the form as 0900. And names have to match the passport's printed or machine-readable zone exactly. Your passenger who goes by Jim still needs every middle name on the form.

Worked example: Lydd to Le Touquet and back#

Back to that lunch. Say you're flying from Lydd (EGMD) to Le Touquet (LFAT), leaving on Saturday 15 May 2027 at 0900 UTC and coming home on Sunday 16 May at 1500 UTC. The GOV.UK list of designated aerodromes shows Lydd as a customs and excise airport, so it can handle the flight. France is outside the Common Travel Area, so the police notice rule further down doesn't come into it.

You file two GARs, one per flight. Each window counts back from that flight's own departure time:

Both windows are open on Friday evening, so you can do the pair in one sitting. The GAR only covers the UK side. France has its own requirements.

The 12 hour rule for Common Travel Area flights#

This is the bit we'd read twice. Flights between the UK and Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man pick up a second duty, under paragraph 12 of Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000. If the UK aerodrome isn't police designated and the flight isn't carrying passengers for reward, the captain has to give the police at least 12 hours' notice.

The good news is that one filing can do both jobs. Annex C of the GOV.UK guidance says a GAR made through sGAR or an approved application counts as the police notice if it goes in between 48 and 12 hours before departure.

Here's how that plays out. Shoreham (EGKA) is listed in Annex A as a customs and excise airport but isn't police designated. Say you're leaving Shoreham for Jersey at 0900 UTC on a Saturday with no paying passengers. The GAR has to be in by 2100 UTC on Friday, not 0700 on Saturday. And we'd take this one seriously, because wilfully failing to notify the police when you have to is a criminal offence, not a civil penalty.

If the flight does carry passengers for reward and the UK aerodrome isn't police designated, the owner or agent needs prior approval from a police examining officer. If you're unsure how that applies to a cost-shared flight, ask the aerodrome's police force (Annex B of the guidance lists the contacts). The separate CAA rules on sharing costs are in our page on cost sharing.

The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man have their own declaration rules too, linked from section 11 of the GOV.UK guidance.

Great Britain to Northern Ireland#

A flight between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is domestic, so it needs no GAR. The Terrorism Act rule still applies, though. From an aerodrome that isn't police designated, on a flight not for reward, email the local police force at least 12 hours before departure. If neither end is designated, email each force.

Where you can land#

The guidance splits UK aerodromes into three groups: designated customs and excise airports, aerodromes approved under section 20B of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979, and everything else. The first two are regulated aerodromes.

• An unregulated aerodrome in Great Britain can only take domestic flights and flights to and from the Isle of Man. A flight from Jersey, Ireland or France can't land there.
• Section 21(1) of the same Act bars the commander of an aircraft arriving from outside the UK from landing anywhere but a regulated aerodrome without permission. Landing elsewhere without customs permission or unavoidable cause carries a civil penalty of £2,500 under the Customs (Contravention of a Relevant Rule) Regulations 2003.
• Approvals vary and not every regulated aerodrome is listed, so contact the aerodrome before planning an international flight there.

So that lovely grass strip near the coast may be fine for a local hop and off limits on the way home from France. Ring first.

When plans change#

Plans change. Section 7 of the guidance and the civil penalties guidance cover what to do.

Diverting in flight is more stressful, and the rules give you an order to work through. If weather or a technical problem forces a new arrival aerodrome, call the HMRC National Coordination Unit on +44 300 123 2012 if it's practicable. If it isn't, divert to the alternate customs and excise designated aerodrome on your flight plan, or to the alternate police designated aerodrome for a flight that needed police notice. If neither works, land at the nearest available airfield, submit a new report and contact the local Border Force team when you arrive. If a diversion before you reach the UK changes your departure aerodrome, the original GAR stands and you don't need a new one.

Because the guidance sends you to your customs alternate, we'd always put one on the flight plan. You don't want to be choosing one with the cloud coming down.

Passports and permission to travel#

The responsible person should make sure everyone on board has a valid passport and, where needed, an electronic travel authorisation (ETA), visa or other permission to travel. The GOV.UK guidance says EU, EEA and Swiss citizens must use a valid passport, because national ID cards are no longer accepted for most visitors. GOV.UK also says people with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme can still enter with a national identity card, so check before you go. This one costs real money. Under section 40 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, the aircraft's owner can be charged £2,000 for each passenger who arrives without proper documents.

Anyone who needs permission to enter must get it before leaving the aircraft. Border Force may grant it remotely by email or phone. If you're unsure, call the local Border Force team.

For clubs: making it routine#

If the club owns its aircraft, the club is a responsible person for them. So write the policy down, and keep it short. Ours would say three things. The captain files and sends the club a copy of the submission. The committee lists the aerodromes its aircraft may use abroad. And any change of passenger, day or destination means a new GAR before the aircraft moves.

If your club uses Volanti, it can ask members to sign its international flights policy in the pilot portal, like any other club agreement, and ask them to sign again whenever the policy changes. Signing doesn't file a GAR. That still goes to the Home Office through sGAR or an approved application.