Collecting Advance Passenger Information Without Slowing Passengers Down

Europe’s Smart Borders program is moving from rollout into day-to-day reality. The Entry/Exit System (EES) launched on October 12, 2025 and became fully operational on April 10, 2026. The European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) is due in the last quarter of 2026, and the EU has already adopted new rules governing how air carriers collect and transfer Advance Passenger Information.

For carriers, the challenge is now practical: how to collect API accurately across document types and channels without adding friction to check-in and boarding.

Advance Passenger Information, or API, is a set of a passenger’s personal information presented in their government-issued identity document and travel details. This information is provided by carriers to authorities before arrival. API includes but isn’t limited to:

• Full name

• Date of birth

• Nationality

• Travel document type and number

• Code of transport

• Port of border crossing

• Port of initial embarkation

• Departure and arrival date and time

API may also include the data on the crew and the flight, such as the total number of passengers.

The exact data set varies by destination country. For travel to the United States, for example, carriers are expected to collect the traveler’s U.S. destination address.

In tenders and operational documentation, you may also see the related term APIS, or Advance Passenger Information System. While API refers to the data itself, APIS usually refers to the system or workflow used to capture, validate, and transmit that data.

API helps move part of border screening upstream by giving authorities key passenger and journey data before arrival. That supports earlier checks, better-informed decisions, and smoother processing at the border.

In practice, API supports three main goals:

• Earlier screening of incoming travelers, helping authorities assess passenger data before arrival and support checks related to admissibility and irregular migration.

• Security and law-enforcement checks, including screening passenger data against relevant government systems, watchlists, and investigative records.

• Faster, more predictable border processing, since part of the review happens before the traveler reaches the border.

API collection sits at the intersection of data quality, passenger flow, and compliance. Carriers need a process that can handle document variability, digital capture, and secure transmission without turning check-in into a bottleneck.

API is only useful if the data is complete, correctly formatted, and reliable enough to act on. The European Commission explicitly states that carriers will have to reach this goal by collecting API by automated means only. However, the pressure is not just to automate API collection, but to automate it well. Errors in names, document numbers, dates, or field mapping can still trigger failed checks, extra review, and delays.

The target data may look simple, but the source documents are not. Carriers deal with passports and other travel documents issued in different layouts, scripts, and security formats. That makes reliable extraction harder, especially when the system relies on generic OCR rather than document-specific parsing and validation.

As API collection moves into mobile and web check-in, carriers lose control over capture conditions. Images may be blurry, cropped, poorly lit, or taken from a screen instead of a physical document. That shifts the problem from simple extraction to capture control and automated validation.

Even when data is collected earlier, failures still surface later. If the system cannot capture or validate data cleanly upstream, the problem often reappears at check-in, bag drop, or boarding. That creates exactly the friction carriers are trying to avoid.

API data also needs to be transmitted securely, logged properly, and traceable later if questions arise. So the challenge isn’t just data capture, but building a workflow that can support transmission, auditability, and follow-up without breaking under passenger volume.

For carriers, API collection works best when it is built into the broader check-in and boarding workflow rather than treated as a separate compliance step. That means capturing and validating passenger and document data earlier in the journey rather than under time pressure at the departure.

The table above shows what a workable API/APIS collection process needs to do. The next question is how those requirements translate into real capabilities. Since vendor offerings vary in depth, the sections below use Regula’s technologies to show what that looks like in practice.

Controlled capture is the first requirement of an effective API collection process. Regula Document Reader SDK addresses this requirement by performing these three operations before actually retrieving the data:

• Quality assessment. The provided photograph shouldn’t be dark or blurry, no parts should be covered with fingers, etc.

• Quality enhancement. The technologies can adjust brightness and contrast, or, if the image is shot at an angle, it’ll be deskewed without affecting the readability of the data.

• Document liveness check. This is a confirmation that the image comes from a real physical document rather than a fake scan.

Travel documents are highly structured, and the same passenger data may appear not only in the visual inspection zone, but also in encoded sources such as the MRZ, barcode, or chip. To turn that information into usable APIS fields, the system needs to identify the source, assign each field its meaning, and prepare the output for further use.

That goes beyond ordinary OCR and requires document parsing: the ability not just to read data, but also to structure, analyze, and validate it. Regula Document Reader SDK uses document parsing to turn document content into output that carriers can work with more directly.

This supports two important tasks:

• Structuring and labeling document data. Each field and element is assigned a type, so the output is highly organized. You can scan a document and instantly retrieve the specific information you need, such as a full name, without manual sorting.

• Extracting visual elements. In addition to text and numeric fields, the system can also extract images such as the holder’s portrait, ghost image, or signature. Depending on the workflow, these elements can be stored, reused, or compared with data from other sources.

Travel documents often repeat the same data across multiple sources within a single document. A document number or date of birth, for example, may appear in the visual inspection zone, the MRZ, barcode, and RFID chip. That redundancy gives the system more than one way to read the same field and more than one chance to catch inconsistencies.

For example, the national passport of Switzerland gives you at least four different opportunities to recognize the document number. That means a fraudster needs to change it everywhere without leaving a trace, which requires much knowledge and skill. That’s why it’s important for a solution to be able to read all the sources, verify, and cross-validate them.

Regula can read data from the available sources within a document and cross-check them automatically. If a field has been altered in one place, the system can flag the inconsistency before the workflow moves further.

An effective API collection process should support authenticity checks. In some cases, attackers subtly alter specific elements of a genuine-looking document, while trying to keep other data fields plausible. Facial morphing is one example of how portrait manipulation can be used to make a document appear to belong to someone it should not.

Regula supports automated authenticity checks through document-specific templates and security-feature analysis. Because travel documents vary widely by country, series, and format, those checks depend on comprehensive template coverage. Regula’s document template database includes more than 16,000 document templates, helping carriers assess a document against the right reference.

For electronic identity documents, Regula can also verify RFID chip data via NFC. Following a zero-trust-to-mobile approach, the solution re-verifies chip genuineness and the results of mobile-side processing on the server, adding confidence in both the document and the extracted data.

Not every APIS workflow begins and ends in mobile check-in. In many cases, carriers still need to capture or verify passenger and document data at physical touchpoints such as check-in counters, bag drop, or boarding gates. In these environments, speed matters, but so does consistency.

That is where document readers can support carrier operations. Regula’s document inspection devices help staff capture document data quickly, apply document-specific checks, and reduce reliance on manual visual review alone. For carriers, that can mean fewer bottlenecks, more consistent document handling, and a smoother path from check-in to boarding.

An effective API collection process doesn’t end once the data is captured. The workflow also needs to support secure data transmission, recordkeeping, and follow-up review. Passenger and document data may need to be passed to national authorities, revisited later, or compared with earlier verification attempts.

Regula supports this by logging the data and results of each verification session, including document details and the outcome of the checks performed. That gives carriers a clearer audit trail and makes it easier to return to the history of a document if questions arise later.

This also helps authorities in cases where the same document details are reused across different attempts. Criminals tend to try to reuse the documents and document templates available to them. For example, the same document number or series may appear again with a different name or portrait. Keeping a traceable record of prior checks makes those patterns easier to spot and investigate.

Formally, biometrics isn’t a part of API. However, biometrics often support the workflows around API collection, especially when carriers want to move more of the identity check upstream into digital check-in and automated boarding. That is why API collection can be paired with facial recognition and face verification, as well as liveness checks in broader passenger-processing flows.

Biometric data helps you link the travel document to the person presenting it. A document may be genuine and its data may be captured correctly, but that still does not confirm that the traveler is the rightful holder.

Biometric checks also become especially useful in remote and semi-automated scenarios. During digital check-in, biometrics can support face enrollment and help confirm that the person presenting the document is physically present. Later, at the terminal, the same biometric data can support a faster handoff at boarding, where the traveler may only need to look into a camera instead of going through the whole process once again.

For carriers, API collection works better when it is part of the passenger journey. Passenger and document data should be captured early, checked properly, and reused later in the flow without making the traveler repeat the same steps at every touchpoint.

That takes more than OCR and a few isolated checks. Document capture, parsing, cross-checking, authenticity checks, secure data handling, and biometrics each solve a different part of the problem. Together, they help carriers collect cleaner API, reduce avoidable friction, and keep check-in and boarding moving.

Regula has spent more than 30 years solving identity verification challenges in high-assurance environments, and its solutions already help protect more than 80 borders worldwide. That expertise now supports passenger-facing workflows, from remote check-in to in-person document inspection. If you’re reviewing how to collect API reliably while keeping the passenger experience smooth, this is exactly the kind of workflow Regula can help you build.