Facilitation (ICAO Annex 9)

Facilitation is the part of air law that deals with borders. Every international flight crosses the jurisdiction of customs, immigration, public health and agriculture authorities, and each could, in principle, demand its own forms, inspections and delays. ICAO Annex 9 (Facilitation) sets the limits: which documents a State may require for an aircraft, its crew, its passengers and its cargo, how many copies, and how people who may not enter a State are to be handled.

The purpose is speed without losing control. Air transport sells time, and an hour saved in the air is wasted if it is lost at the border. Annex 9 therefore standardises the paperwork, encourages electronic exchange of data before arrival, and spreads responsibility among States, airports and operators. It sits beside Annex 17 (see aviation security): facilitation removes needless obstacles, security keeps the necessary ones, and the two Annexes are written to balance each other.

Purpose of Annex 9

Annex 9 derives from Article 37 of the Chicago Convention, which empowers ICAO to adopt international standards on customs and immigration procedures among other subjects. Two further Articles give it purpose. Article 22 obliges each State to adopt all practicable measures to facilitate and expedite navigation by aircraft between the territories of Contracting States and to prevent unnecessary delays, especially in administering the laws on immigration, quarantine, customs and clearance. Article 23 commits States, so far as they find it practicable, to establish customs and immigration procedures in accordance with the practices established under the Convention (see Chicago Convention).

Like the other Annexes, Annex 9 contains Standards, which States must follow or notify ICAO of a difference, and Recommended Practices, which they endeavour to follow. Differences are common in facilitation, because customs and immigration law is guarded closely by governments. France, for example, records in its AIP that it may still require a General Declaration where it considers it necessary, notably because of the type of illness involved or the origin of the flight, and that it regards presentation of the cargo manifest as most useful to its customs service.

Aircraft Entry Documents

Annex 9 limits the documents a State may demand for the arrival or departure of an aircraft to a small set with standard layouts:

The General Declaration is signed by the pilot-in-command or by an authorised agent of the operator. It also covers the crew and the passengers embarking and disembarking, although the long-standing aim of Annex 9 is to remove the reference to passengers from it altogether, since their details reach the authorities in other ways. States may not require more than 3 copies each of the General Declaration, the Cargo Manifest and the General Stores List.

The documents may be typewritten, produced in electronic data form, or handwritten in ink or indelible pencil, provided they are legible, which in practice means block capitals. These entry documents are separate from those the aircraft must carry under Article 29 of the Convention, such as its certificates of registration and airworthiness, the journey log book and, when passengers or cargo are carried, a passenger list and cargo manifest (see aircraft registration and documents).

For the crew of an airline flight, most of this is invisible: the operator or its handling agent prepares and transmits the documents, and the pilot-in-command signs where a State still asks for a General Declaration. A pilot flying a private or business aircraft abroad often handles the formalities in person. Where the State's regulations so require, the Chicago Convention obliges an aircraft entering its territory to land at an airport the State has designated for customs and other examination, and to depart from one when leaving, so the choice of destination and alternate aerodromes must take border services into account, as well as their opening hours.

Crew Member Certificates

Airline crews cross borders several times a day, and asking each of them for a visa at every stop would make operations impossible. The crew member certificate (CMC) was developed as an identity card for flight crew and cabin attendants, so that crew licences can serve their primary purpose of attesting professional qualifications.

A Contracting State must accept the CMC for temporary admission without requiring a passport or visa, provided the crew member:

• keeps the CMC while in the State;
• remains at the airport where the aircraft has stopped, or within the confines of the adjacent cities; and
• departs on the same aircraft or on the next regularly scheduled flight out of the State.

A crew member who wants to travel further into the country, or stay longer, falls under the normal immigration rules.

Transit Passengers

A transit passenger is one who stops at an airport on the way to another State without entering the State of the stop. Many wait in a direct transit area, which Annex 9 defines as a special area established in an international airport, approved by the public authorities concerned and under their direct supervision or control, where passengers can stay during transit or transfer without applying for entry.

Other passenger provisions aim at the same simplicity. An oral declaration of the contents of passenger and crew baggage is acceptable, and the authorities may inspect bags at random rather than examine them all. Where a State allows travellers to enter without a visa, as under a visa waiver scheme, the State of departure will not require any identity document other than the passport.

Inadmissible Passengers

An inadmissible passenger, in Annex 9 terms an inadmissible person, is a person who is or will be refused admission to a State by its authorities. Typical reasons are the lack of a required visa, exclusion from a visa waiver scheme, a passport that is invalid, or no right of residence. Because such a passenger was carried to a State they had no right to enter, the operator that brought them is responsible for removing them, to the point where the journey began or to any place where they are admissible. The State concerned serves the operator with a removal order, a written order directing it to remove the person from its territory.

This responsibility is why airlines check travel documents at check-in and at the gate: the operator is expected to take reasonable precautions to ensure that passengers hold the documents their destination and any transit State require.

The commander keeps the final say on safety: EU air operations rules let the commander refuse to carry an inadmissible passenger, deportee or person in custody whose carriage poses a risk to the safety of the aircraft or its occupants.

Deportees and Persons in Custody

A deportee is a person who had been legally admitted to a State, or had entered it illegally, and who is later formally ordered by the competent authorities to leave. Removal of a deportee is organised by the deporting State, which makes the travel arrangements with the operator and provides any escort, defined in Annex 9 as an individual authorised by a Contracting State or an aircraft operator to accompany inadmissible persons or deportees. Persons in custody travel under escort because judicial or administrative proceedings oblige them to.

These passengers are treated as potentially disruptive. The practice is to:

• tell the operator in advance, and the operator informs the pilot-in-command;
• embark them first, before other passengers, together with their escorts;
• seat them away from emergency exits, since EASA's acceptable means of compliance list deportees and persons in custody among passengers who should not have seats with direct access to an exit;
• apply the security measures agreed between the State and the operator for the flight.

The pilot-in-command may refuse carriage where safety is at risk, and an escalating case is handled like any other disruptive passenger situation under the commander's authority.

Electronic Data Interchange

Electronic data interchange (EDI) replaces paper declarations with data sent between operators and border agencies in agreed formats. Annex 9 encourages States that introduce EDI techniques to plan a migration to complete reliance on the electronic system, so that operators do not have to run paper and electronic procedures side by side. France notes in its GEN 1.7 differences the drawback of the opposite approach: where use of the electronic system is optional, the normal customs clearance procedure for cargo has to be kept as well.

The most visible application for passengers is advance passenger information (API), in which the operator sends the passport data of everyone on board to the authorities of the destination before arrival, so that checks can be made while the aircraft is still in flight. Some States also receive passenger name record (PNR) data from airline reservation systems. Annex 9 bars States from demanding data elements outside the internationally agreed message standards, so that operators can meet the demands of many States with one system, and its PNR provisions oblige States to protect the personal data they receive.

The same thinking applies to cargo, where electronic manifests let customs assess consignments before the aircraft lands.

Library articles are written for study and exam preparation. They do not replace your aircraft's approved documentation, your operator's procedures or the regulations themselves.