South Africa is one of the leading countries in the world in implementing the latest commercial aviation security systems. This was pointed out on Tuesday by International Air Transport Association (Iata) head of facilitation Bob Davidson. The systems concerned are Advanced Passenger Information (API) and interactive Passenger Name Record (PNR). The lead agency for this effort in South Africa is the Department of Home Affairs.

“South Africa was not only the first State on the [African] continent to implement API, it was also the first, and to date only, State in Africa to implement PNR,” he highlighted. “It is one of only 13 States in the entire world to go the entire distance” and link its API and interactive PNR systems together. “[Around the world] API and PNR are collected and stored in entirely different systems.”

API and PNR are being implemented globally as a result of the passing of United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 2178 in 2014. This prescribes measures UN member States should adopt to fight terrorism and the movement of terrorists between countries.

API is biographical data of airline passengers and crews, vetted by their home countries and contained in their passports. This is data such as name, age, gender and nationality. It is collected by the airline when a passenger checks in and this data is then transmitted to the authorities in the destination country, where it is automatically processed and any passengers regarded as undesirable or previously forbidden to travel to that country are identified. The information that a passenger is banned is then transmitted back to the airline and the passenger is informed they cannot board the flight before they are even issued with a boarding pass. The entire process usually takes between two-and-a-half and four seconds. API is a good border control tool.

“PNR is data that goes into an airline booking system when you make a reservation,” he explained. “It’s anything and everything about what service you require from the airline. It was never intended for border control. PNR grows over time [as a passenger flies more and more]. It is airline commercial data that governments require now to be shared [with them].” PNR allows travel patterns to be identified and is proving very useful in fighting smuggling, especially drugs. It is also valuable in countering international terrorism, which is the main factor which drove States to require access to it.

“Aviation [in Africa] is growing and growing very rapidly,” cited Iata VP: Africa Raphael Kuuchi. “Alongside growth, we are seeing spots of insecurity around the continent.” This is a concern for both governments and airlines. As a result, Iata hosted a two-day conference in Sandton, north of Johannesburg, on API-PNR for African States, not only to aid them in adopting these systems but to encourage them to use the same standards for them. “We don’t want a proliferation of systems.”

This conference follows the Ministerial Conference on Aviation Security and Facilitation in Africa (held in Windhoek, Namibia, in early April) which called upon all African States to implement API by the end of 2020. This will bring them into line with Resolution 2178.

Worldwide, Iata is working to encourage countries to adopt common standards for API and PNR. As the global representative body for the airline industry, the association has been involved with governments and intergovernmental agencies, especially the World Customs Organisation, since the capture of airline passenger data first started in 1992, and has helped develop standards.