Back to Air Transport IT Review - Issue 2, June 2011

Border control and self-service – a hand-in-hand experience for passengers

As critical elements of the passenger experience, border controls and airline security have resulted in long lines at airport checkpoints. Not to mention the increased burden on airlines of providing biographic data. But is there light at the end of the tunnel?

It used to be that the check-in desk was the first queue that travellers met on their journey. No longer so. Self-service has made a world of difference. Thanks to the industry's intensive focus on queue reduction and a continuous stream of developments and innovations, self-service kiosks, Web and mobile check-in have chipped away at the time and cost involved in waiting at check-in.

The result? An enhanced experience for passengers and the removal of inflexible legacy processes costing the industry billions of dollars. Yet airport queues remain a familiar sight. The difference now is that they're associated with security, immigration and customs processes. Today's long lines at airport checkpoints are passengers having their identities, clothing and belongings checked ... painstakingly.

On top of that is an increasing burden of cost and resource on airlines and airports - not only to provide biographic data on passengers but also to verify their identity. The elements involved in the entire process are time-consuming - testing passenger patience and imposing untenable costs on airlines and airports.

'Eliminating long lines'

Given the sheer practicality of physically screening and clearing the identity and physical status of 2.5bn people a year - let alone the more than 7bn air travellers ACI projects by 2017 - it's imperative that the industry improves the process. Where self-service has not been introduced - in areas such as security and customs - new process thinking will once again need to make the difference. And once again shave off billions of dollars in costs to the industry.

Novel information and communications technologies will be required to facilitate the changes. They will need to deliver significant financial and administrative benefits - and a greatly enhanced level of service - across the 14 steps identified by IATA's Passenger Experience Management Group in the end-to-end process of the passenger journey.

Accounting for six of those steps, border management is seen as an integral part of passenger processing. This will facilitate the move towards secure self-service in which border controls and self-service developments go hand-in-hand. Working alongside IATA and other key bodies, SITA is at the heart of this passenger experience revolution.

It means no longer the divide between an industry focused on facilitation and governments focused on security. By looking at the entire end-to-end passenger process, working with new stakeholders such as governments, IATA's Passenger Experience programme is examining the big picture. It brings a focus to the elimination of long lines, rather than shifting them from one place to another within the airport.

New concept in security checkpoints

Combining biometrics, stand-off screening and passenger data, the industry is looking towards a new concept in security checkpoints - the 'Checkpoint of the Future' (see box) - that sees passengers walking uninterrupted through a security screening system , or 'security tunnel', where all security and customs processing occurs in a transparent manner.

Passenger information would play a crucial role in this new concept. Security checkpoints for the future would combine data collected by customs and immigration agencies with data collected for security. This represents a very different way of thinking, since passengers are screened to a degree commensurate with what is known about them.

Also on the drawing board is the concept of passenger differentiation that aims to establish a high degree of certainty of an individual's risk level. Results from pre-screening would be known to checkpoint screeners and used to determine the level of risk and the appropriate security measures.

Everybody will be screened electronically - via the data - and physically. However, the ratios of electronic and physical screening will vary according to the risk assessment.

Double act: biographic-biometric

"Biometric technology is a critical enabler of this vision," says Thomas Marten, SITA's Vice President of Business Development. "So too is advance risk assessment. While biometric and other technologies are crucial for verifying passenger identities, governments need to capture the biographic data on passengers in advance and make a decision about passengers before they arrive or depart - high risk, low risk, or somewhere in between."

In essence, a consolidation of data known on a passenger will determine the risk assessment, while the biometric data will make sure that assessment is applied to the right person once at the airport.

"For most countries, this is the thinking - making it imperative for cross-industry cooperation," says Marten. "We're seeing this in the European Union. It means working at an international level, moving beyond siloed national mentalities."

SITA's own border management solutions were developed in close cooperation with IATA and in association with governments worldwide. They can be used to detect 'persons of interest' while facilitating the safe and rapid passage of low risk travellers.

The portfolio includes databases, risk assessment and visualization tools, while biometric identity and document authentication are also fully integrated. SITA has also developed its Passenger name Record (PNR) gateway to receive data from an airline's reservation and departure control systems so it can normalize, filter, and send the data to governments as required.

Revolutionary

Using biometrics, passenger data and other technologies, the next generation security screening checkpoint will be revolutionary. The concept brings self-service to security clearance. Through complex risk management tools, it offers improvements in the quality of security judgments made. It removes the hassle and frustration felt by passengers against existing systems. And it offers considerable savings in space and manpower costs within the airport.

The technology behind the concept is complex and ground-breaking. But for the passenger, it promises a far simpler and less stressful process that will be to their benefit and the benefit of all involved in the process of taking them from one city to another.

Advance Passenger Processing

For governments, airports and airlines, SITA's iBorders Advance Passenger Processing (APP) is a proven interactive solution used by government and border security agencies throughout the world.

Easily integrated into airline systems, it is the only proven commercially available interactive APP solution that relays passenger information in real time, effectively allowing the destination and origin government to make a real-time decision to prevent individuals who pose a potential threat from boarding an aircraft. This allows governments to be proactive instead of reactive, identifying issues at check-in. It enables governments and border security agencies to:

Extend borders intelligently - to the point of departure.
Enable pre-departure screening.
Issue real-time boarding directives - Board/No Board at check-in of inbound and outbound passengers.
Generate expected movement records to enable risk assessment and appropriate consequential action.
Process, on arrival, large volumes of passengers with greater efficiency.
Avoid the huge costs associated with the administration and repatriation of undesirable visitors.

SITA also provides systems that undertake risk assessment and facilitate intervention.

Checkpoint of the Future... walking through 'tunnels of technology'

Combining technology and security intelligence, the concept of the Checkpoint of the Future sees passenger security screening with an emphasis on enhanced security and more efficient throughput.

IATA's vision is to have passengers walk -- without stopping, stripping or unpacking -- through 'tunnels of technology' appropriate to each person's risk level as identified through background screening.

Committee members at the 37th ICAO Assembly in 2010 stated that industry and government roles in aviation security should be aligned and that a Checkpoint of the Future should be developed.

To support this, IATA developed a conceptual framework for the Checkpoint of the Future in late 2010, hosting an ICAO workshop for interested countries with the Airports Council International. An ICAO Technical Advisory Group comprising 19 governments is, as a result, working with airlines and airports on refining the checkpoint's principles and designing and testing its concept.

IATA will work with governments and industry stakeholders to facilitate agreement on a common set of security screening principles, and work towards the design, test and implementation of the next generation security checkpoint.

Security screening principles

According to IATA, the Checkpoint of the Future will reflect the following security screening principles:

The checkpoint should, to the fullest extent possible, integrate passenger information into the physical screening process.
It should be designed to maximize throughput for the vast majority of people deemed to be a low security risk without compromising security.
Screening should be commensurate to the risk posed by the individual passenger.
The checkpoint should strengthen security by focusing resources on higher risk passengers.
The checkpoint should be designed to take into account existing airport environments, airport sizes and types of operations.
The checkpoint should to the maximum extent possible leverage existing screening equipment, while providing the flexibility to incorporate new technology as it becomes available.

Biometric borders

The range and complexity of services provided by SITA has grown swiftly, as a result of increasing government demands. Biometric solutions include:

The ability to capture a variety of biometric inputs (face, finger and iris, for instance) storing them securely on a database or writing them to a token for verification. This is achieved with SITA's iBorders BioThenticate, enabling the integration of biometric identity management throughout the passenger handling process, including border management.
Typical applications of biometrics include enrolment in registered traveller programmes or access control systems, as well as biometric checks at various 'checkpoints', for example, security, boarding gate and exit gate.
The ability to check that travel document information is genuine, through SITA's document authentication system iBorders docScreen. Checks can also be made against databases and flight itineraries.
The combination of document authentication and BioThenticate enables the association of a biometric with a travel document, which prevents a travel document (even if genuine) from being given to another traveller at some stage of the departure or arrival process.

Intelligence and air cargo security

By James Fernandez Vice President Sales & Marketing, CHAMP Cargosystems

Only 10% of air cargo shipped in passenger flights is security checked - despite the fact that it represents 70% of total air cargo.

The industry needs to address this self-evidently dangerous flaw. But the answer is not simply a blanket 100% physical screening: that is inefficient, costly and one-dimensional.

We need to introduce intelligent threat assessment, using information from a range of sources to build cargo profiles as early as possible. We need to ensure the highest levels of screening are focused on cargo assessed as highest risk, similar to the profiling techniques that underpin passenger security programmes.

Involve all stakeholders

This can only be achieved if government agencies and cargo operators worldwide work together to develop a balanced, multilayered and flexible approach. It must be globally accessible through any technology system.

It must involve all of the supply chain stakeholders and integrate seamlessly with cargo management systems. The benefits would not only accrue through enhanced security - the system could also be used to counter theft, smuggling, counterfeiting and natural hazards.

Recent attempted terrorist attacks using air cargo have resulted in a flurry of activity reminiscent of the early days of anti-terrorist passenger security policies. New laws are coming into effect for the supply of advanced shipment information. At the same time, customs authorities worldwide are placing their own particular demands on the airfreight industry.

Common approach

But there is no common approach, with regional and country-based customs standards requiring carriers to repeatedly invest in new technology to adapt to specific customs specifications.

As a community, we need to develop a single source, advance cargo reporting system. We need a single information gateway through which airlines can confidently exchange information electronically with national customs authorities - regardless of format, communications protocols and processing rules. This information can be augmented from other sources to allow a reasoned intelligence assessment.

Pragmatic, intelligence-led screening that pulls together pre-existing and new information flows will deliver real benefits to the entire community of stakeholders - and provide further protection for the travelling public.