SITA's APIS Solution To Help Indian Govt Keep Passenger Check

Aviation Information Technology (IT) specialist SITA recently announced that over 50 airlines flying into India will use its communications network to meet new Indian government requirements for the provision of an advance passenger information system.

Following a test period, over 50 airlines are already using SITA’s community advance passenger information system (APIS) solution, which has had to be customised to meet the new security requirements of the Indian government and particularly the special requirement for submission of APIS data in XML files, rather than the standard US or UN Edifact.

In line with the international civil aviation organisation (ICAO) recommended practice, APIS collects basic biographical information from machine-readable travel documents, such as passports and visas - in other words, the same information that would be provided to border agents.

Bruno Frentzel, SITA senior vice president, Applications Services, said, “SITA, as a community provider of IT solutions to the air transport industry, is pleased that we have been able to adapt our APIS solution to meet both the needs of the airlines and the Indian government.”

“Together with the international air transport association (IATA), SITA strongly supports international standards to make the automatic delivery of passenger information to governments as painless as possible. Many governments, around the world, have special requirements for security and facilitation. Airlines using SITA’s community hub have the complexity of differing government requirements removed, as SITA can take the appropriate data and securely deliver it to the government in the unique format requested.”

The SITA solution is being deployed for airlines flying into six major airports, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Cochin, Hyderabad and Chennai, as per current government requirements, which may be extended to all international gateways in due course.

Maneesh Jaikrishna, SITA director for India and South Asia, said, “SITA is happy to provide this service with a view to a possible move to interactive APIS, which would enable the Indian government to receive this information at actual check-in rather than 15 minutes after flight departure. This would allow automatic detection of suspects, before boarding the aircraft by cross-matching the passenger data against watch lists.”

This year’s SITA/ business airline IT trend survey showed that only 16 percent of airlines provide no passenger data and by 2009 this will drop to three percent.