From the ops desk

Overflight permit lead times, country by country.

Every state on the route issues its own permit on its own timetable, and the one that takes longest sets the date the trip can actually fly. This is what we see across the ten jurisdictions we file in most, ordered by which one to start first.

The comparison

Which permit do you start first?

The one nearest the top. These are ordered longest first, because on a multi-state routing the slowest authority is the one that sets your earliest possible departure date. Everything below it can be run in parallel.

Overflight and landing permit lead times for ten jurisdictions, ordered longest first. Columns: country, civil aviation authority, when to start planning, and what we see on the ops desk.
Country	Authority	Start planning	What we see on the desk
China	CAAC	Longest — start first	Among the longest we deal with, comparable to Saudi Arabia. Build it into the trip from the first conversation rather than treating it as a task to start once the dates are set.
Saudi Arabia	GACA	Longest — start first	Plan on several working days and treat anything faster as luck. Short-notice approvals do happen and we will always try, but no schedule should depend on one.
Brazil	ANAC	Days, not hours	Moderate by international standards, though the requirements have changed more than once in recent years. We file against the current rules rather than the ones that applied last season.
Egypt	ECAA	Days, not hours	Several working days for a straightforward application. Cairo will sometimes move faster, but the corridor is busy and the authority does not hurry for anyone.
India	DGCA	Days, not hours	Several working days is normal and the clock only starts when the file is complete. An application missing one document has not started at all.
Indonesia	DGCA Indonesia	Days, not hours	Several working days is the sensible assumption. Requirements and processing have both moved in recent years, so we file against current practice rather than precedent.
Mexico	AFAC	Days, not hours	Private flights are generally quick. Commercial authorisation through AFAC needs real notice and should never be left to the week of the trip.
Nigeria	NCAA	Days, not hours	Start well ahead. Approvals do come through faster than the worst case, but a Nigerian trip planned on a short fuse is a trip planned on hope.
Cuba	IACC	Short notice workable	Routine requests are usually back within a working day, and short notice is often possible. Weekends and Cuban public holidays are the constraint rather than the volume of paperwork.
Morocco	DGAC Maroc	Short notice workable	Reasonable and consistent. Morocco is one of the easier African filings and one of the few where a short-notice request is a fair thing to ask for.

Longest — start first: The permit is the critical path. Nothing else about the trip should be firmed up while this one is still open.
Days, not hours: Working days rather than same-day, and the clock only runs once the file is complete.
Short notice workable: A late request is a fair thing to ask for here. It is still not a thing to plan around.

How this was built

Where do these lead times come from?

From our own filings, and nowhere else. Not one of these authorities publishes a service level for private and business aviation permits, and the ones that have quoted a figure informally have not held to it. So the table states what we see rather than what anyone promises.

That is also why there is no column of day counts. A number on a page like this gets planned against, and a wrong one costs an operator a departure slot rather than a little credibility. We would rather write “several working days” and mean it than write “3–5” and not.

Why do lead times differ so much between countries?

Because the authorities are doing different jobs. At the fast end, the permit is essentially a notification: the state wants to know who is crossing and when, and it can answer inside a day. At the slow end it is an assessment. Saudi Arabia and China both read the purpose of the flight, the operator and the passenger list rather than logging them, and an assessment cannot be hurried by filing it harder.

Volume matters less than people expect. Egypt processes an enormous number of overflights on the Europe to Gulf corridor and is not the slowest on this list. The document requirement is what predicts the wait.

What resets the clock on an application?

This is the part that catches people, and it is the reason a lead time quoted in days is misleading on its own. Two things restart it. The first is an incomplete file: several authorities on this list do not query a missing document, they return the application, and the days already spent do not count. The second is a material change. Move the dates, the routing or the passenger list far enough and the application is assessed again from the beginning, which spends the lead time twice.

Which is why we would rather hold a filing for two hours while an itinerary firms up than file it early and refile it on Thursday.

Do overflight and landing permits take the same time?

Rarely. An overflight permit is generally the faster of the two, because the state is being told about an aircraft passing through rather than admitting one. A landing permit usually pulls in things an overflight does not: confirmed handling, confirmed parking, and at several of these jurisdictions the visas for everyone aboard. The bands above describe the slower of the two, since that is the one your schedule has to survive.

The trap is the trip that needs an overflight permit for a country it never lands in. Egypt and Indonesia both turn up on routings that stop nowhere near them, and both are discovered late for exactly that reason.

READ THIS AS A FLOOR

Every band above assumes a complete file, a firm itinerary and a working week. Public holidays in the issuing state are not in it, and they are the single most common reason a routine permit lands late.

What if your route is not on this list?

These ten are the jurisdictions we file in most and have written up. They are not the limit of where we file. Send a routing and a tail number and we will tell you every permit it needs, including the states you only cross, and which one sets the date.

How the permit service works →