Every day, airlines worldwide welcome almost eleven million passengers. That’s four billion per year.
Only a few of them may be a security threat, but you cannot afford to miss a single one. This means border personnel need all the support that technology can provide.
Most countries have no effective systems for managing passenger data. This critically weakens their border security. The UN recognized the seriousness of the problem, and in 2018, made it mandatory to have an API system.
More UN regulations - how is that good news? Because an API system strongly reinforces your borders, and it's much quicker and easier to implement than you may think.
Our API/PNR software makes processing passenger data a breeze. It tightens border security without blocking passenger flow. It can even prevent criminals from crossing the border in the first place.
Make border security and flow a reality.
WCC’s HERMES is a flexible and future-proof API/PNR solution for dealing with passenger data. It is ready-to-use: easy to implement, maintain, configure, and operate. HERMES is the only solution built specifically to meet the requirements of mid-sized countries.
HERMES uses a three-step approach.
First, HERMES collects all available passenger data. It accepts standard types of connectivity, and can even connect you to airlines directly. The software will point out any data conflicts. HERMES supports API, iAPI, and PNR out of the box.
Second, HERMES checks the data against various watchlists, using WCC's superior multi-cultural name matching algorithms. In this step, you can also match data against pre-configured risk profiles to flag suspicious travelers. The profiles are established by border experts and machine learning algorithms, but you can also configure your own.
Third, HERMES offers strong capabilities for data analytics and risk assessment. In this step, officers may forward information for further investigation, and specialists can analyze the information in HERMES. Using heatmaps and other analytical tools, you can identify patterns to make your risk profiles even more accurate.
Tsarnaev. Tsarnayev. A trivial difference – just one letter. And yet the Boston Marathon bombing could have been prevented, if not for this difference.
In 2011, the FBI put Tamerlan Tsarnaev on their watchlist as a high-priority target.
In 2012, Tsarnaev traveled to Russia for terrorist training. He left and re-entered the US unnoticed due to one tiny mistake: his watchlist record contained a typo, so the system failed to trigger the alert.
In 2013, the Tsarnaev brothers killed three and injured several hundred people in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Terrorism cannot be prevented with a single keystroke. But one single keystroke created a crack in the defenses that allowed a terrorist to slip through.
And that is something technology can prevent – and should.
API
Advance Passenger Information is data which the airline sends to the border authority in the destination country. It is usually sent in batch mode: one manifest for all pas-
sengers onboard at ‘wheels up’.
Interactive API (iAPI) is also possible; here, individual data about each passenger is sent in real time. This gives border authorities more preparation time and can even lead to denial of boarding. API includes the name, birth date, nationality, country of residence, gender, and travel document type and number.
PNR
The Passenger Name Record contains personal information of a passenger or group of passengers travelling together. This includes their itinerary, but also data such as payment information, frequent flyer data, seat allocation, food preferences, final destination, and any remarks from the airline.