The Aviation Library
Trip Support and Operations Guides
Before a private jet leaves the ramp, a second trip has already been flown on paper: permits requested, slots confirmed, customs arranged, fuel released, crew cleared. These guides are that trip, written by the Icarus Jet desk from the flights it files and checked against ICAO, EUROCONTROL and the national authorities.
Most trip support pages online are written to sell. These are written to be used. Each one starts from the question a dispatcher asks before an aircraft moves, and answers it the way the desk would on the phone: what’s required, how long it takes, and what goes wrong when it’s missed. When a rule changes, the page that owns it says so and dates it. Start with the region you’re flying into, or with the subject that’s holding up the trip.
Browse by region
Trip Support Across Six Continents
Europe in summer, the Gulf in winter, the Americas all year and Africa at short notice. The desk plans and files private flights into every one of these regions, and each guide carries what it has learned doing it: which authority issues the permit, how far ahead, where the aircraft can park and what the crew needs on arrival.
Europe
Greece, France, Italy, Portugal, EES and ETIAS, A-CDM and summer slots, VAT and customs, Davos.
United Kingdom
The GAR and the ETA, choosing the London airport, night restrictions, fees and pets.
Middle East
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Iranian airspace, fuel planning and the 2026 changes.
The Americas
United States and Mexico, eAPIS, ESTA and TSA waivers, Teterboro, TFRs, Canada in winter.
Caribbean and Pacific
Airports of entry, the Bahamas, Cuba, the USVI, Bora Bora and hurricane season.
Africa
Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Somalia and Libya airspace, permits with a backup provider.
Asia
China’s two-stage permit, Beijing and Shanghai parking, Pakistan airspace, GPS jamming.
Australia
CASA permits, the Sydney curfew and slots, Melbourne around the clock and biosecurity.
Browse by discipline
Trip Support Guides by Discipline
Some rules change at every border and some apply everywhere. These guides cover the ones that apply everywhere: landing and overflight permits, customs and crew entry, slots and ATC, handling and parking, fuel, weather and aviation regulation, written by the desk that files them every week.
Permits
Landing and overflight permits, lead times by country, documents, conflict zones and sequencing a multi-country routing.
Customs and Crew
eAPIS, the GAR, GenDec and APIS, ESTA, ETA, EES and ETIAS, crew visas, pets and airports of entry.
Slots and ATC
Slots and PPR, CTOTs and A-CDM, flight plan suspension, IFR routes, data link, night curfews, TFRs, oceanic procedures and ETOPS.
Handling and Parking
How the invoice is built, where parking runs out, weight limits, APU rules, potable water, hangarage and AOG.
Fuel
Jet-A and Jet A-1, the three layers of a price, fuel releases, ramp fees, tankering, ReFuelEU and tax in Europe.
Weather
Ceilings and visibility, ILS categories, ISA, icing and de-icing, hurricane season and the special-approach airports.
Regulation
Part 91 and Part 135, cabotage, crew age and medicals, VAT and customs on aircraft, taxes and insurance mandates.
Before you file
The Language of Trip Support
The words that decide how a trip is filed, defined once and used the same way in every guide, so a permit, a slot or a GenDec means exactly one thing wherever you read it.
- Landing permit
- National authorisation to enter a country’s airspace and land, filed with the civil aviation authority before the flight. Lead times run from about a day to ten days or more depending on the country, and each country page gives its figure and the documents it wants.
- Overflight permit
- Permission to cross a country’s airspace without landing, needed for many FIRs in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. A multi-country routing is sequenced so every overflight is in hand before the aircraft departs, and a change of route can mean new filings.
- Slot
- A coordinated arrival or departure time at a Level 3 airport such as Athens, Geneva, Zurich, Luton or Dubai International. Missing the window can mean a penalty or a refusal, and in the peak weeks the slot, not the aircraft, is often the constraint.
- PPR
- Prior permission required: the airport’s consent to come at all, requested with the aircraft type, the time and the parking. Farnborough and Biggin Hill run on it, some fields need PPR and a slot together, and it is not the same thing as a landing permit.
- CTOT
- Calculated take-off time, issued by the EUROCONTROL Network Manager when a sector or an airport downstream is congested. It gives a window of five minutes before to ten minutes after, and the flight plan and the destination slot are worked around it.
- eAPIS and GAR
- Advance passenger and crew declarations filed online before departure: eAPIS for flights into and out of the United States, the General Aviation Report for the United Kingdom. A missing or late filing brings fines, so the desk files them with the trip.
- Handling
- The ground agent that meets the aircraft and arranges fuel, customs, parking, catering and the passengers. Mandatory at most European, Gulf and African airports, booked with the permit or the slot, and itemised on the invoice the desk checks.
- Cabotage
- Carrying passengers between two points inside one country on a foreign-registered aircraft. Most countries restrict it for commercial flights, so the desk checks the registration, the operating rules and the passengers before a domestic sector is added to a trip.
Questions
Questions we answer before a trip is filed
What is trip support?
The desk work behind a private flight: permits, customs and crew paperwork, slots and flight plans, handling and parking, fuel releases, weather briefing and the regulation check, arranged before the aircraft moves and watched while it flies.
How do I find the rules for a specific country?
Open the region hub, then the country page if the country has one. Each holds permits and lead times, airports of entry, slots, handling, fuel and crew rules, with the articles on that country listed beneath.
Where are the subjects that apply everywhere?
On the seven discipline hubs: permits, customs and crew, slots and ATC, handling and parking, fuel, weather and regulation. Each explains the discipline once and points to the country pages where the rule differs.
How current are these pages?
Every hub and article carries a reviewed-by line and a last-updated date on the hero. Rules that change are updated on the page that owns them and dated, so a fact can be traced.
Who writes and reviews them?
The Icarus Jet trip support desk writes them from the trips it files, and the founder reviews them. The facts are checked against the desk’s own operations data.
Do private jets need permits to fly internationally?
Outside the United States, Canada and the EU, almost always: a landing permit for each country and an overflight permit for each FIR crossed. The permits hub explains how they are issued and sequenced, and the country pages give the lead times.
What paperwork do passengers and crew need?
It depends on the destination: eAPIS and ESTA for the United States, the GAR and the ETA for the United Kingdom, EES and ETIAS for Schengen, visas or crew authorisations elsewhere. The customs and crew hub carries the filings and the country pages the specifics.
Where are the airport guides?
In the airport library, one page per field with runways, hours, slots, customs, handling and fuel, linked from the country hubs and from the route guides.
How do I get a trip handled rather than read about it?
Send the dates, the aircraft and the stops to the desk. The trip support service page describes what is filed and arranged; the flight permits and jet fuel pages cover those two services on their own.
What is not in this collection?
Charter pricing, route guides, aircraft comparisons and the flying-private guides, which live in their own collections in the Aviation Library. This collection is operations only.
Keep Exploring
More from the Aviation Library
Three more sections from the same desk, each written from the trips it books and files.
Airports
Airport Guides
Runways, permits, slots and handling for every field we fly into.
Industry
Industry Insights
Private aviation as an industry rather than as a product.
Filing a trip through one of these regions?
Send the dates, the aircraft and the stops to the trip support desk. It files the permits and the paperwork, books the slots and the handling, releases the fuel and gives you a number you can hold us to.