Universal Permission to Travel Systems

This information is pertinent to Pilots who are carrying non-British passport holders on flights to/from the UK and are completing an online General Aviation Report (GAR).

From September 2024, some visa national passengers will hold digital-only eVisas. These passengers will no longer have physical immigration documents for you to check.

If a ‘Valid Permission to Travel Found’ response is received via the Submit a General Aviation Report (sGAR) web service, please note that pilots, operators and agents are not required to make further checks for a visa or other immigration document. You will not be subject to any carriers’ liability in relation to that passenger’s permission to travel.

If a ‘Authority to Carry Granted’ response is received, for visa national passengers you should conduct a manual check by:

• checking for a valid, physical visa or other immigration document

and/or

• using a Sharecode, which passengers with digital immigration products can request from their UKVI (UK Visa and Immigration) account.

Please refer to the following link for more details about using Sharecode to check a digital-only product: https://www.gov.uk/check-immigration-status.

In all cases, you should continue to check that the passport or travel document held by the passenger is valid, genuine and in the possession of the rightful holder.

In addition, the Home Office are consolidating multiple contact points within the Home Office to a single point of contact: the new UK Border Force Carrier Support Hub.

This will be a 24/7 support function to answer all carrier queries related to a passenger’s permission to travel to the UK; security related queries, or technical support for submitting data to the Home Office. The Carrier Support Hub will go live on the 30th September 2024 at 10:00am (UTC).

You can contact the hub on the following telephone number: +44 300 369 0610 after the go-live date.