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As the governments of Korea and Canada introduce new data requirements for airlines flying to their countries, SITA announced the launch of two services which will help airlines to meet these new obligations. SITA’s services will also lower the cost of compliance for airlines globally as they meet evolving requests from other governments.
Both new offerings are part of SITA’s iBorders Gateway Services. The first, SITA’s interactive advance passenger processing (iAPP) service, now meets the new requirements of the Government of Korea. Data from the airlines is checked, formatted and submitted by SITA to the Korean Government in advance of flight departure and airlines then receive a real-time board/no board directive back from the government system. Already several carriers from North Asia are using the service and others from South Asia and North America will be connected over the coming weeks.
The second SITA service for airlines meets the changing requirements of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) which were announced in July. Under these new regulations, airlines must submit passenger name record (PNR) and advance passenger information system (APIS) data in a new format, and using a different form of connectivity, by the CBSA’s December 2011 deadline.
The information, which includes passengers’ biographic data from passports combined with booking and check-in details, is used by the CBSA to conduct security risk analyses and to establish the right of passengers to enter the country. SITA already provides iBorders Gateway Services to a number of airlines to meet the CBSA’s current regulations and is now modifying it to meet the recent changes. The restructured service will acquire the data from the airlines; filter it to exclude any data fields not permitted by data privacy legislation, then combine and place the PNR data (booking and check-in details) in the new IATA-defined PNRGOV EDIFACT format and ‘push’ it to the CBSA for risk assessment.
Dan Ebbinghaus, SITA, Vice President Government and Security Solutions, said: “Because SITA has over a decade of experience providing sophisticated border management solutions we can meet the needs of both governments and airlines as regulations are changed.
“Despite the efforts of the air transport industry to achieve standardization on data submission formats, individual governments are still coming up with different interpretations of those formats along with different connectivity requirements and submission timings. Airlines need to be able to meet the various obligations as they evolve with the least amount of hassle, at the lowest cost and in the quickest timeframe. For these reasons we are in advanced discussions with many to help them meet the Korean requirements and approaching CBSA deadline.”
SITA’s services enable airlines to conform to the differing demands of various governments in a simplified and cost-effective way. The airlines provide the data to SITA and all the checking, formatting, submission and maintenance of compliance is managed by SITA, allowing airlines to concentrate on their core activities. Because SITA is the air transport industry’s community provider, airlines benefit from sharing the costs of the service with other users rather than bearing the expense of individually building and maintaining each service.
SITA was the first IT solutions provider to deliver border management solutions to the air transport industry and is the only one that serves airlines and governments on every continent. Today more than 200 airlines use SITA to submit millions of records every week to governments around the world making SITA the leading provider of border management solutions for both government and airlines.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
