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 the US or UN Edifact. By the end of the year, almost all of the airlines serving some 75 per cent of all India-bound passengers, will deliver APIS information using this system.
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.
Speaking at India aviation 2008, 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 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.”
SITA is the world’s leading provider of APIS services to airlines and governments. It provides such services in the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Kuwait, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom.
This year’s SITA/airline business airline IT trend survey showed that only 16 per cent of airlines provide no passenger data and by 2009 this will drop to three per cent.
About SITA
SITA is the specialist provider of integrated IT business solutions and communication services for the world’s air transport industry. SITA manages complex communication solutions for its air transport, government and GDS customers over the world’s most extensive communication network, complemented by consultancy in the design, deployment and integration of communication services. Its broad range of airline and airport IT applications and services includes airport operations and integrated baggage services, common use and desktop services, flight operations and air-to-ground communications and end-to-end airline distribution and fares services.
SITA has two main subsidiaries, OnAir, which is leading the race to bring in-flight mobile telephony to the market and CHAMP Cargosystems, the world’s only IT company solely dedicated to air cargo. SITA also operates two joint ventures providing services to the air transport community, Aviareto for aircraft asset management and CertiPath for secure electronic identity management. In addition, SITA sponsors .aero, the Internet top level domain reserved exclusively for aviation.
SITA covers 220 countries and territories and the head office is in Geneva, Switzerland. SITA had consolidated revenues of US$1.42 billion (€ 1.06 billion)in 2007.
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