The European Commission on Tuesday presented a proposal to revise the rules to extend to all flights within the European Union the obligation for airlines to collect and transmit basic passenger information to border control agencies prior to the departure or arrival of the flight so that it is available to the authorities at the first line border point.
The international Advance Passenger Information (API) system has existed since the 1990s and the EU introduced its own rules for its application in 2004, but Brussels now wants to extend the scope of this mechanism to improve control over irregular transits and reinforce security because it allows the authorities to anticipate the arrival of the passenger.
The Community services concede that it will be on intra-European flights where the review will have the greatest impact because until now companies were not obliged to comply with this system in the case of flights operated within the European Union, but it was applied randomly on some of them.
Brussels also assumes that the collection and transfer of additional data will imply «an additional cost» for the airlines, but defends that it will be «mitigated» by another of the measures foreseen in the revision that foresees the creation of an API ‘router’ to centralize the data traffic and avoid intermediate steps between the authorities of each country and the flight operators.
The changes may also involve modifications to applications and online check-in procedures for airlines and investment in equipment to complete airport facilities, for example to have automated devices for optical character recognition to «read» passenger travel documents.
