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US immigration-APIS

The United States Government recently implemented new requirements of air carriers to provide additional passenger information (APIS) that must be collected in advance of travel to/from the US that supplements that passport data already collected.

Given that the collection of this data is a legal obligation it is therefore essential that passengers arrive at the airport with all the necessary information.

From 4 October 2005 passengers must arrive at the airport with details of their address whilst in the US, this must include the ZIP code wherever possible plus reveal the country in which they are permanently resident.

  • There are certain travellers that are exempt from this requirement e.g. US citizens, Legal Permanent Residents (LPR's) and transit passengers*. Country of residence is required for all passengers regardless of their nationality and/or LPR and in-transit status. 
  • The content of a hotel address should include as much detail as possible such as hotel name, street name, area, city, state and a zip code if known but as a minimum hotel name and city.
  • If passengers are joining a ship they must provide the vessel and cruise name.
  • If passengers are in transit they must provide the non-US country name, the carrier/vessel name and number.
  • If passengers are hiring a car they must make a reasonable attempt at providing a general itinerary, for example: Touring Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon. 
    LPR's must provide their Alien registration Number.

*In-transit passengers are defined as those who transfer through the US for the purpose of continuing their journey to a third country, where the time period between arrival in and departure from the US does not exceed 8 hours.

bmi is currently evaluating ways of collecting this data in advance of the day of departure in order to prevent congestion and delays at the airport.

Whilst we fully appreciate the burden created by the introduction of the new regulation, it is important to recognise that our longer-term objective must be to reduce any inconvenience to our mutal customers. Accordingly, in order  to minimise the impact upon check-in times we respectfully request that agents collect this infomation in the passenger name record(PNR) wherever possible, at either the booking or ticketing stage when the information is known.  We recognise that PNR collection will be dependent upon your own system capability and thus we request that data collection be undertaken as soon as you are able to do so and only for new bookings made on or after this date.  We will not seek any retrospective update of PNR's created before the date on which your system is ready.

It is important to remember, however, that those customers who have not provided this information before they arrive at the airport will be subject to an extended check-in process, given that collection at the airport is achieved only through a manual and time consuming edit routine. 

Remember - Customers eligible to travel under the Visa Waiver Programme must present a machine-readable passport or be in possession of a Valid US Visa.

Any further updates will be added as they become available.