Those who have chosen to use OnlineGar have appreciated its ease of use, speed and convenience, compared to other ways of submitting a UK GAR. Here is how the new PprPal app compares
| feature | PprPal.online APP | OnlineGar.com |
| save multiple aircraft | 👍 | 👍 |
| save and copy previous forms | 👍 | 👍 |
| cancel | 👍 | 👍 |
| cross check for valid entries | 👍 | 👍 |
| submit return leg on same form | 👍 | |
| create documentation for both ends of a journey | 👍 | |
| warnings about notice period or invalid port of entry | 👍 | |
| import trip data from FP (skydemon/Rroute/Foreflight/Autorouter) | 👍 | |
| ability to create a form in advance of 48hrs and send automatically | 👍 | |
| Save personal details in contacts | 👍 | |
|
read contact details from vcard sent from colleague |
👍 | |
|
scan passport and insert data |
👍 | |
|
read passport scan sent as image |
👍 |
Whilst PprPal apps retain almost all of the functionality of OnlineGar there are certain necessary changes.
- in preparation for the ‘permission to travel’ rules which are to be shortly implemented, it has been necessary to treat the GAR/gendec submission as a single trip event. a return trip require 2 submissions. This greatly simplifies the process of sending and validating a GAR. It is very simple to reverse the outbound/inbound trip change times and resubmit in the apps
- OnlineGar has been for some years financially supported by charitable donations and cross subsidisation from other work which has come to an end. One of the reasons for moving away from a browser (client server) based architecture is that it inherently offers the user a dedicated ‘cloud’ for storing their personal and sensitive ID data. To provide adequate back up and safeguards for this is expensive and untenable. The PprPal app on the other hand stores such personal data on your own machine. Responsibility for security rests with the user and owner just as it would for saving personal contact details or passwords.
- We realise that a browser based OnlineGar is a ‘one stop shop’ and that many pilots will do their planning on , say, a laptop and then maybe refer to the submission (permission, ref nos) on their phone or tablet. To simulate this multi machine use without using the browser based client-server approach we have created a facility within the apps to store all form information in the users personal cloud – currently Dropbox, Google drive and One Drive are supported. As the apps work on desktop (windows or Mac) the pilot can do his planning on such a laptop, sync with his cloud account and pick up his phone or ipad if editing , cancellation are needed. Of course the full submission can be done on the Android or Ios app.
- A considerable amount of work has been put into the apps to ensure they provide assistance to the pilot. For example if travelling within the CTA and arriving at a non police designated airfield one is required to give 12 hours notice. This fact will be flagged up if the users trip details breach this rule. Similarly UKBF will not accept submissions before 48 hours. Instead of discarding such submissions or just giving an error message, the apps give a warning and ask if you wish to store and have the submission made automatically when the deadline passes.
- We have incorporated the ‘gendec’ forms for a number of non UK jurisdictions. the apps will fill in and send the pdf to the relevant authority – saves on creating an excel template and forwarding it
We hope you will appreciate the changes, realise we are retaining almost all of onlinegar.coms features whilst providing more for free, and wont lament too much that OnlineGar.com in its current form has reached the end of the road. But if we get it right the PprPal.online apps will do all OnlineGar.com has done and more, for free.