Spain's APIS Border Control System
The right format at the right time
December 2009
SITA has implemented a major border control solution to improve the management of Spain's international air borders - giving Spanish government authorities more effective control over passenger movements and border security by helping almost 200 airlines meet new and evolving requirements and regulations for Advance Passenger Information (API).
The business issue
Spain's international airports are the primary gateway between Europe and Latin America for the passage of people and goods. Of the 100 million passengers arriving each year at Spain's air borders, about 25 million arrive from countries outside the Schengen area1, with the vast majority travelling from Latin America.
In 2004, in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings, the European Council established a legal basis for EU Member States to require Advance Passenger Information data from airlines for all passengers arriving from outside the Schengen area. As a result, the Spanish government authorities wanted to find an air transport industry (ATI) technology expert and partner who could deliver the information they needed, in the right format, at the right time. The Spanish government chose SITA, the global leader in air transport communications, IT solutions and border security.
In a written response to questions by a member of Congress at the Committee of Interior in June 2008,the Spanish Secretary of State for Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs, Ministry of Interior positively noted: "...the heads of the various airports border posts expressed satisfaction in terms of the performance and support that the API system provided their border control officers."
SITA's solution
In designing a tailored response to the unique needs of the Spanish government and its border control and customs authorities, SITA faced three key challenges:
- The system needed to be able to accept APIS data in virtually any of the different formats or messaging protocols used by today's airlines, in order to drive rapid uptake
- The project timeline from solution sign-up to system deployment was extremely ambitious and aggressive
- The solution needed to be rolled out in rapid succession to nearly 200 different airlines across all of Spain's major airports.
The Spanish government chose a fully managed solution based on SITA's iDetect product, which exports APIS data to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior (SGSICS) in the formats required. Using normalised data from a central location, the solution enables border control authorities to conduct pre-arrival passenger risk assessment live, for any border entry point into Spain.
The project began as a pilot implementation in March 2006 and, by June 2007, had processed over one million passengers. Thanks to its ease of implementation, SITA's iDetect managed solution rapidly brought a large number of airlines online within a relatively short period of time.
Today, it allows the Spanish authorities to check tens of millions of passengers travelling on almost 200 airlines against lists of unauthorized or undesirable persons - including lists of wanted persons, lists of lost and stolen passports, eVisa lists, and lists of violators of immigration laws.
iDetect also allows border control authorities to analyze patterns of passenger activity and interpret the full, harmonized, data-set prior to a flight's arrival - a key component of high value intelligence gathering for border security and control.
"SITA's fully-managed iDetect APIS solution is reliable, simple and highly cost-effective - and is critical to keeping Spanish borders secure."
Tom Marten, VP Government & Security
SITA
Benefits
SITA's fully managed iDetect APIS solution allows Spain's border control authorities to acquire an enhanced set of passenger data, in the correct format, whenever it's required, for fast and accurate pre-arrival passenger profiling and risk assessment.
Tailored to Spain's precise requirements, the system offers a number of unique benefits deriving from SITA's experience and know-how:
- Proven, low-risk solution with rapid delivery
- Highly cost-effective
- Reliable and simple; removes APIS implementation complexity
- Facilitates fast airline buy-in
- Delivers business continuity & disaster recovery
By choosing a fully managed solution from the industry's leading provider of air border management systems, Spain now benefits from a system that constantly evolves to keep pace with changing government requirements, while at the same time delivering the information and analytical capabilities needed to keep the country's borders safe and secure.
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