Proposed new rules for private flights outside the USA

[Rick Gardner]

I urge all SOAP members who have not responded to the US Customs and Border Protection Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) to do so before the November 19, 2007 deadline. In its current form, the NPRM would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for many pilots who enjoy flying to Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas and the Caribbean to comply and does not reflect the reality of the resources and infrastructure available to pilots on international private flights.

Caribbean Sky Tours and a number of different private and government groups and associations are working in conjunction with AOPA to respond to the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) and we are meeting regularly. AOPA has set up a step-by-step process to provide CBP with your comments which can be found at: http://www.aopa.org/advocacy/customs/

We believe that a strong response by the pilot community to this NPRM is extremely important to demonstrate that the NPRM needs to be modified to reflect the resources available to private pilots flying internationally while still allowing CBP to protect our borders

[Rick Gardner]

We have been working with AOPA and US Customs and Border Protection in Washington on the eAPIS implentation and forwarding the issues that we, and our customers, are having with the system. We received a notification yesterday from CBP that as of 6:00 am yesterday, the email problems with eAPIS have been fixed. If anyone continues to have issues with receiving eAPIS emails would you please contact CBP, AOPA or myself so that we can forward the complaint on to CBP. None of our last 10 eAPIS submissions have worked properly (incomplete receipt of approval email from eAPIS) so we are very concerned. I will be on a trip to Panama through Central America next week and will test the system again myself but since the problems have been "hit or miss" for many pilots, what works for one may not work for another, so please keep speaking up if you have problems.