Passenger information system in intl airports to be upgraded

In view of the growing terror threat, the advance passenger information system (APIS) installed at all international airports in India is being upgraded by global aviation technology firm SITA, which has tied up with over 50 airlines flying into the country.

The APIS is a system that gives a complete picture of an air traveller for risk assessment by providing their details to border control authorities like immigration as soon as an aircraft takes off for India from somewhere across the globe.

The SITA, or the Geneva-based Societe Internationale de Telecommuncations Aeronautiques, has provided the APIS technology to India. It serves 50 airlines, several governments and a large number of airports and aerospace firms.

SITA has "signed up with more than 50 airlines flying into India to use its communications network and messaging capabilities to meet Indian government's new requirements for the provision of an APIS," its vice-president (government and security solutions) Thomas Marten told PTI in an interview.

He said SITA's capability was to "interconnect with all airlines flying to India, and all other telecommunications operators serving such airlines so that the airlines can comply with legal requirements at the lowest cost."

The APIS transforms data from the raw standard used for airline messaging and delivers it to the Indian government in the format required for processing by their sophisticated applications and databases, Marten said.

In its simplest form, APIS is a post-departure system which combines passenger and flight data from a number of different sources to provide border control authorities with clear, detailed and standardised records for each traveller on incoming flight, ahead of arrival.

In line with the International Civil Aviation Organisation's recommended practice, APIS collects basic biographical information from machine-readable travel documents like passports and visas, to be provided to border agents when a traveller enters a country.

The APIS system adopted by India delivers data for passenger risk assessment to border control authorities before the passengers arrive, Marten said.

An advanced version of the APIS was the interactive APIS, which is part of the iBorders solution created by SITA for the Australian government to support the Sydney Olympics in 2000, he said.

The SITA officer said the "logical progression" from an APIS system would be to combine basic APIS data regarding name, nationality and passport number, with data from additional sources "to provide a complete picture of the traveller for risk assessment".

Such data can also be valuable in containing health risks, like swine flu, he added.