The Canadian government contracted SITA globally to transfer airline Passenger Name Record (PNR) data compiled from booking and check-in records. SITA has now developed a service on behalf of the airlines for filtering out sensitive fields of information which would be in breach of Canadian and EU privacy legislation.
The service was first tested in April 2006 and has now been adopted by seven airlines flying into Canada: Alitalia, Czech, KLM, Martinair, Olympic, Swiss and one leading US carrier.
Tom Marten, SITA Vice President, Government and Security, said, “SITA’s
service has been working well since it went live in April. On behalf of the airline customer, we act as an intermediary between the airline and the receiving government. We extract the PNR data from the airline’s Reservations and Departure Control Systems and push it across our secure network after the sensitive fields of information have been filtered out.
None of the PNR data is saved on our system once it has been exported.” “This new Push/PNR Filter helps airlines meet their dual obligations. On the one hand, they must protect the data of their passengers and conform to national and international privacy directives. On the other hand, they must provide limited information on passengers according to the laws of countries seeking to improve national security. The SITA services provide a convenient, rapid and economical alternative for many airlines which would otherwise have to build an equivalent solution themselves.”
SITA is in discussion with a number of airlines which would like to use the “Push/PNR Filter” to transfer PNR data to the United States following a
recent ruling by the European Court of Justice.
The Push/PNR Filter service is the latest addition to SITA’s expanding capability in border management and security. The company has signed contracts valued at $44 million so far this year for the provision of its border management solutions, including its Advance Passenger Processing
(APP) Solution which facilitates passenger flows and security monitoring by allowing instant pre-boarding checks against any watch lists held in the country of destination.
Kaynak : 