[Paul462]

I had an e-mail exchange and telephone conversation with CBP Officer Ralph Modisette today, which yielded the following info:

1. There are three CBP officers manning the General Aviation e-apis desk: Officers Ralph Modisette, Michelle Bernal, and Eric Rodriguez (part time). Their phone number is (972)973-9844, generally manned (or woman-ed) 8 AM - 5 PM Central time. Sometimes an e-mail inquiry will get a faster response.

2. Offcr. Modisette claims that on average the flight permit is e-mailed back 1 - 2 minutes after the manifest is submitted.

3. No PAX profiles are contemplated to be included in the e-apis software due to cost.

4. The only private companies certified as e-apis portals are ARINC and FLTPlan.com.

5. Officer Modisette had the following e-mailed comments to offer:

You may depart from any US port or place. The field help associated with the Departure “Airport” field addresses this situation:

“Enter the ICAO airport code corresponding to the last domestic port of departure. For a complete list of airport codes select the Options button to the right of the field. If the airport code is not found, chose the airport code closest to your departure site. If you’re not leaving from the airport location, enter details of departure location below.”

The “Airport” field is used to assign the departure manifest to the correct CBP airport of departure, but the “Departure Location Description” field is the port or place from where you actually depart.

Hope this helps,

Ralph D. Modisette

and:

Once you have submitted a manifest through eAPIS, if you need to add additional travelers, you can submit another manifest with the same flight information. It is not necessary to resubmit the travelers that have already been transmitted, but you will need to resubmit the pilot each time as eAPIS always requires a pilot for each manifest.

For deleting travelers, once a manifest has been submitted, travelers cannot be deleted. It is not necessary to do anything further.

Changing of airports and/or times does not need to be completed in eAPIS as long as the flight is on the same date. For these changes, please contact the affected CBP airport. If there is a change to the date of a flight, a new manifest should be submitted through eAPIS.

eApis does not currently have the option available to cancel a manifest once it has been submitted. To ensure that a CBP officer does not respond to a cancelled flight, please contact the affected CBP airport to advise of the cancellation.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.

Hope this helps,

Ralph D. Modisette

6. Ernie, please advise your impressions after trying out the lobolabs.com beta version. It seems like it could be worthwhile.