14 ms·

Do countries get the list of every passenger that's transiting their airspace?

178 points by beatthatflight 5y ago

wildrhythms 5y ago
I'm disappointed by the top answer: it doesn't seem to make a clear distinction between 'the airport' (a gigantic swath many types of workers, private, public ownership, etc.) and the authority which actually collects and processes passenger information inside of the airport. 1. My ID is scanned at the airline-owned kiosk/desk to "check in" and print a boarding pass. I'm in the public section of the airport. (Where does this data go?) 2. My ID is scanned by an authority at the security checkpoint (TSA). My boarding pass is now "linked" to a presumably verified ID. I'm in the "secure" section of the airport. (Where does this data go?) 3. My boarding pass (now linked to my ID) is scanned at the jetway as I board the plane. I'm on the plane. (Where does this data go?)
- hourislate 5y ago
  >1. My ID is scanned at the airline-owned kiosk/desk to "check in" and print a boarding pass. I'm in the public section of the airport. (Where does this data go?) Airline Reservation System >2. My ID is scanned by an authority at the security checkpoint (TSA). My boarding pass is now "linked" to a presumably verified ID. I'm in the "secure" section of the airport. (Where does this data go?) Department of Homeland Security/Fed Gov Agencies >3. My boarding pass (now linked to my ID) is scanned at the jetway as I board the plane. I'm on the plane. (Where does this data go?) Goes to the Airline Reservation System and is shared with FAA/DHS/NO FLY LIST and if travel is International, it will be sent (before the plane leaves the gate) to the Destination Country to be checked by their Customs/Immigration/NO FLY LIST/Police. You will not be permitted to board if you show up on the NO FLY LIST.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    You forgot booking databases. 90+% of flights go through either Amadeus, or Sabre, which were of course long coopted by governments around the world to provide every piece of data possible. This way Russia knows where to send their hitmen to kill political opposition, Israel spies on Palestinians travel around the world, and US knows when to send extradition requests for Russian carders when they travel abroad.
    - gabereiser 5y ago
      This. I worked at NCR building the kiosks at the airport. We integrated with Amadeus and Sabre as well as duplicating the data directly to the BOSS systems (old terminal mainframes). Your passenger information and your itinerary are shared with TSA, Airlines, published to travel systems, and checked against NO-FLY lists the moment you press that “Get boarding pass” button. Whether it be by an agent, at the kiosk, or on mobile.
      - anfilt 5y ago
        Is there anyway to buy/book directly instead going through this Amadeus, and this Sabre software you mention?
        lstamour 5y ago
        Nope. It’s the mainframe software airlines use for “computerized check-in” and the ability to list flights from different airlines for different legs of the same journey, just like banks use mainframes designed for checking accounts or companies use ERP systems or governments make budgets. Outside of actually flying and maintaining planes, these systems are deeply integrated to how airlines coordinate between each other, how airports show flight information and so on. We’ll replace them when the last person uses a physical VISA card (probably never…) Another way of putting it: whatever replaces these systems will likely be forced to do the same thing, so why bother?
        gabereiser 5y ago
        To further this, any systems designed to "replace" these systems must also first talk to these systems and provide identical functionality. This was the case with the old BOSS systems we had to integrate with using term screen scraping and pushing text-based booking codes. The same codes used by agents at the ticking counter when you see them type 500 characters just to look you up in their systems. Only now, they aren't interacting with the BOSS system anymore, it's Amadeus or Sabre they are interacting with.
        5y ago
- pandem 5y ago
  Maybe that's how it works in America, but it doesn't mean it's the same everywhere. And given that the post was motivated by recent events in Europe it doesn't seem too relevant. In Europe when you go through security no one checks your id. In fact most of the time when you fly inside Schengen with hand luggage only no one checks your id at all. But there definitely isn't something comparable to TSA that would have the information.
  - djxfade 5y ago
    The last few years I have been flying, my ID has been checked before entering the security check. This was a recent change introduced a few years ago. I presume this is done everywhere in Europe.
    - midasuni 5y ago
      Haven’t flown since covid, but from 2019 flights, Not in U.K. (ID only checked at gate - intl flights only) and Not in 3 schengen airports (ID only checked after security when leaving schengen area) Don’t recall other airports enough but I didn’t do domestic flights. Nairobi I feel had more ID checks but could be wrong.
    - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
      same experience here and I'm also all over Europe. The time when you could just fly without hassle only lasted a few years. Now I have to look into the empty eyes of some dweeb wanting to check my passport like I'm entering Beirut in 1982. I feel obliged to thank them out of artificial politeness but really want to just ask them why they had to get a job that allows them to display power. Not that these checks ever prevented a "terrorist" attack. Airports only catch small drug mules that could have taken a bus anyway. Freedom of movement was one of the major selling points for joining the EU to the unwashed middle classes. That has all gone to the dogs (at least for business travel). The only advantage of free movement that still exists is being able to live and work in other countries. It's typical when they do something in the name of "sEcURitY" they will never roll it back. Classic "salami tactic" and a slow encroachment by the system[1]. Opinions on this obviously vary depending if a person uses a uniform for work in order to compartmentalize their conscience, has to defend family working for the security apparatus, or peddles crappy/racist "AI based" biometric software to the system. Perhaps wanting to become a "person of authority" is like a gender thing which people have no choice over. So I shouldn't make fun or look down at them: ACAB ("Assigned Cop At Birth"). Also the worst of all countries has doubtlessly been the UK. Even you arrived coming from Europe, they shepherded you through the slow-lane like a smelly goat with noises that sound like Dick Van Dyke doing a Bricktop impression. [1] https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci...
fortran77 5y ago
Since they were interested in this specific person, the reports that they had someone following him at the airport are probably correct. That would be the easiest/cheapest way of being sure he's there and actually on the plane.
- morpheuskafka 5y ago
  But it also risks the agents being arrested if something went wrong (especially since their behavior was outwardly suspicious) and could be seen as a much more serious aggression since it involved a physical intrusion into the country's territory. I don't get why they even needed agents on the plane at all.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    Perhaps to avoid a mistake -- they could only expect one chance at this. For a while now, far fewer intra-Schengen flights will overfly Belarus, and people in the journalist's situation will now book two-leg flights to be certain they won't cross Belarus (or Russia).
  - andyjohnson0 5y ago
    > I don't get why they even needed agents on the plane at all. To extract them from Greece (an EU country) and avoid their arrest?
  - throwawayffffas 5y ago
    > I don't get why they even needed agents on the plane at all. They had to be sure he boarded that flight and didn't get off after he boarded. > And could be seen as a much more serious aggression. To me it looks like this was a deliberately not very aggressive way of snatching him. The alternative would be to snatch him of the street and smuggle him to Belarus. The logistics would be a lot harder and the diplomatic implications a lot more dire.
baybal2 5y ago
Yes, they do, in fact, almost everybody in the travel industry can get its hands on PNRs, and manifests. A travel history of almost everybody can be reconstructed fully for the last ~10 years from those databases. And of course that stuff went to .onion sites. That's just like almost everybody's financial information collected, and reported for the sake of "counterterrorism" (CRS,) and, soon, SIM card subscriber data. Up until quite recently, a number of countries had access to every bank transaction in the world going through SWIFT in Switzerland. Every time you pass the border in the airport, the guy in the booth can google pretty much every administrative record about you down to things like your parking tickets. Not to say, things like criminal records are an open book across "developed" countries.
- foepys 5y ago
  SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    My bad
    - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
      You were not completely wrong. There is a long story of state agents trying to access SWIFT messages. At some point, SWIFT had to set up a backup data center in Switzerland in order to route European transactions within Europe. The other data center is in the Netherlands.
      - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
        ...And the American data center is not far from NSA HQ. And they do not have a data center in Asia.
- jesterson 5y ago
  Just a side note - it's peculiar how we use "googling" as a synonym of searching. The guy you've mentioned won't be using google and I hope he doesn't have google on the device to fetch all necessary data
underseacables 5y ago
I’m more inclined to believe the Belorussian intelligence knew ahead of time the details, and acted. Absolutely distasteful.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
It looks like the Belarus KGB was on the flight anyway - presumably the journalist was being followed/tracked: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/24/belarus-seizure-blogger-ryanair-flight-us-outcry https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/24/belarus-seizur...
- andix 5y ago
  I think that’s obvious. Probably they even have agents with EU citizenship that can move freely around Europe.
- trhway 5y ago
  Belarus official version is that Protasevich's girlfriend send a photo of him from the Athens airport to a guy (Anton Motolko) who is officially considered extremist or something like this by Belarus and who published the photo in his Telegram where monitoring it Belarus authorities saw the photo. If it is true, then the social media is definitely wet dream of state authorities like Stazi.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    I thought the official Belarus line was that they had a tip about a bomb and that when the plane landed they "happened" to find a wanted person on board? Are they now admitting that the plane was forced down to arrest him?
  - kwanbix 5y ago
    Isn't Telegram e2e encrypted? Or I am understanding your comment wrong?
    - xarici_ishler 5y ago
      That's a common misconception. Telegram private chats are by default not e2e encrypted (but you can create a separate "secret chat", which will be).
      - 5y ago
andix 5y ago
I once wanted to board a plane from Havanna to Europe and because of a computer glitch my clearance for the US airspace didn’t get approved. So they nearly took off without me. After 20 minutes of trying to get it approved, they found out that I was checked in twice, and got two seats assigned. The other boarding pass got the confirmation and seemed to prevent the second confirmation. So they took away my boarding pass, and told me to hurry to the plane (a 767 parked directly in front of the gate). I jumped in 5 minutes after scheduled departure time and before I could even get seated they stated push back :D.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  I once managed to board the wrong plane but I was recorded as being on the other plane. I was checked into the other plane, so they couldn't take off without me, and the plane I was on had to let me off. It was a huge fiasco; I had to get off the plane after it left the gate, hitch a ride with security to the correct plane. I got chewed out by both pilots... security held me in the back of the car asking me how I did it. I really had no idea how I did it. It turns out the gate was changed and I didn't notice. I also scanned my boarding pass several times at the gate by holding it over the scanner too long. It turned out that when you've already scanned at the gate, it wouldn't tell the attendant your flight information, just that it was already scanned. They wouldn't let me on the next plane until they figured all this out. They've fixed this bug :) but that is how you successfully delay two flights and piss off some pilots.
  - totalZero 5y ago
    This is the kind of thing where an airline only has itself to blame. It's disheartening that the people tasked to pilot both aircraft took issue with your actions when their own company's inept error handling was at fault.
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      It turns out it’s really hard to believe someone is on the wrong plane by accident. Initially, I was accused of trying to sneak on the plane. It was an international flight.
contingencies 5y ago
Please contribute concrete knowledge to Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#International_PNR_sharing_agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#Internat... which is based on EU FOI requests not random hearsay. (Full disclosure: I made the FOI and wrote it.)

I'm disappointed by the top answer: it doesn't seem to make a clear distinction between 'the airport' (a gigantic swath many types of workers, private, public ownership, etc.) and the authority which actually collects and processes passenger information inside of the airport. 1. My ID is scanned at the airline-owned kiosk/desk to "check in" and print a boarding pass. I'm in the public section of the airport. (Where does this data go?) 2. My ID is scanned by an authority at the security checkpoint (TSA). My boarding pass is now "linked" to a presumably verified ID. I'm in the "secure" section of the airport. (Where does this data go?) 3. My boarding pass (now linked to my ID) is scanned at the jetway as I board the plane. I'm on the plane. (Where does this data go?)

hourislate 5y ago
>1. My ID is scanned at the airline-owned kiosk/desk to "check in" and print a boarding pass. I'm in the public section of the airport. (Where does this data go?) Airline Reservation System >2. My ID is scanned by an authority at the security checkpoint (TSA). My boarding pass is now "linked" to a presumably verified ID. I'm in the "secure" section of the airport. (Where does this data go?) Department of Homeland Security/Fed Gov Agencies >3. My boarding pass (now linked to my ID) is scanned at the jetway as I board the plane. I'm on the plane. (Where does this data go?) Goes to the Airline Reservation System and is shared with FAA/DHS/NO FLY LIST and if travel is International, it will be sent (before the plane leaves the gate) to the Destination Country to be checked by their Customs/Immigration/NO FLY LIST/Police. You will not be permitted to board if you show up on the NO FLY LIST.
- baybal2 5y ago
  You forgot booking databases. 90+% of flights go through either Amadeus, or Sabre, which were of course long coopted by governments around the world to provide every piece of data possible. This way Russia knows where to send their hitmen to kill political opposition, Israel spies on Palestinians travel around the world, and US knows when to send extradition requests for Russian carders when they travel abroad.
  - gabereiser 5y ago
    This. I worked at NCR building the kiosks at the airport. We integrated with Amadeus and Sabre as well as duplicating the data directly to the BOSS systems (old terminal mainframes). Your passenger information and your itinerary are shared with TSA, Airlines, published to travel systems, and checked against NO-FLY lists the moment you press that “Get boarding pass” button. Whether it be by an agent, at the kiosk, or on mobile.
    - anfilt 5y ago
      Is there anyway to buy/book directly instead going through this Amadeus, and this Sabre software you mention?
      - lstamour 5y ago
        Nope. It’s the mainframe software airlines use for “computerized check-in” and the ability to list flights from different airlines for different legs of the same journey, just like banks use mainframes designed for checking accounts or companies use ERP systems or governments make budgets. Outside of actually flying and maintaining planes, these systems are deeply integrated to how airlines coordinate between each other, how airports show flight information and so on. We’ll replace them when the last person uses a physical VISA card (probably never…) Another way of putting it: whatever replaces these systems will likely be forced to do the same thing, so why bother?
        gabereiser 5y ago
        To further this, any systems designed to "replace" these systems must also first talk to these systems and provide identical functionality. This was the case with the old BOSS systems we had to integrate with using term screen scraping and pushing text-based booking codes. The same codes used by agents at the ticking counter when you see them type 500 characters just to look you up in their systems. Only now, they aren't interacting with the BOSS system anymore, it's Amadeus or Sabre they are interacting with.
      - 5y ago
pandem 5y ago
Maybe that's how it works in America, but it doesn't mean it's the same everywhere. And given that the post was motivated by recent events in Europe it doesn't seem too relevant. In Europe when you go through security no one checks your id. In fact most of the time when you fly inside Schengen with hand luggage only no one checks your id at all. But there definitely isn't something comparable to TSA that would have the information.
- djxfade 5y ago
  The last few years I have been flying, my ID has been checked before entering the security check. This was a recent change introduced a few years ago. I presume this is done everywhere in Europe.
  - midasuni 5y ago
    Haven’t flown since covid, but from 2019 flights, Not in U.K. (ID only checked at gate - intl flights only) and Not in 3 schengen airports (ID only checked after security when leaving schengen area) Don’t recall other airports enough but I didn’t do domestic flights. Nairobi I feel had more ID checks but could be wrong.
  - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
    same experience here and I'm also all over Europe. The time when you could just fly without hassle only lasted a few years. Now I have to look into the empty eyes of some dweeb wanting to check my passport like I'm entering Beirut in 1982. I feel obliged to thank them out of artificial politeness but really want to just ask them why they had to get a job that allows them to display power. Not that these checks ever prevented a "terrorist" attack. Airports only catch small drug mules that could have taken a bus anyway. Freedom of movement was one of the major selling points for joining the EU to the unwashed middle classes. That has all gone to the dogs (at least for business travel). The only advantage of free movement that still exists is being able to live and work in other countries. It's typical when they do something in the name of "sEcURitY" they will never roll it back. Classic "salami tactic" and a slow encroachment by the system[1]. Opinions on this obviously vary depending if a person uses a uniform for work in order to compartmentalize their conscience, has to defend family working for the security apparatus, or peddles crappy/racist "AI based" biometric software to the system. Perhaps wanting to become a "person of authority" is like a gender thing which people have no choice over. So I shouldn't make fun or look down at them: ACAB ("Assigned Cop At Birth"). Also the worst of all countries has doubtlessly been the UK. Even you arrived coming from Europe, they shepherded you through the slow-lane like a smelly goat with noises that sound like Dick Van Dyke doing a Bricktop impression. [1] https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci...

fortran77 5y ago

Since they were interested in this specific person, the reports that they had someone following him at the airport are probably correct. That would be the easiest/cheapest way of being sure he's there and actually on the plane.

morpheuskafka 5y ago
But it also risks the agents being arrested if something went wrong (especially since their behavior was outwardly suspicious) and could be seen as a much more serious aggression since it involved a physical intrusion into the country's territory. I don't get why they even needed agents on the plane at all.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  Perhaps to avoid a mistake -- they could only expect one chance at this. For a while now, far fewer intra-Schengen flights will overfly Belarus, and people in the journalist's situation will now book two-leg flights to be certain they won't cross Belarus (or Russia).
- andyjohnson0 5y ago
  > I don't get why they even needed agents on the plane at all. To extract them from Greece (an EU country) and avoid their arrest?
- throwawayffffas 5y ago
  > I don't get why they even needed agents on the plane at all. They had to be sure he boarded that flight and didn't get off after he boarded. > And could be seen as a much more serious aggression. To me it looks like this was a deliberately not very aggressive way of snatching him. The alternative would be to snatch him of the street and smuggle him to Belarus. The logistics would be a lot harder and the diplomatic implications a lot more dire.

baybal2 5y ago

Yes, they do, in fact, almost everybody in the travel industry can get its hands on PNRs, and manifests. A travel history of almost everybody can be reconstructed fully for the last ~10 years from those databases. And of course that stuff went to .onion sites. That's just like almost everybody's financial information collected, and reported for the sake of "counterterrorism" (CRS,) and, soon, SIM card subscriber data. Up until quite recently, a number of countries had access to every bank transaction in the world going through SWIFT in Switzerland. Every time you pass the border in the airport, the guy in the booth can google pretty much every administrative record about you down to things like your parking tickets. Not to say, things like criminal records are an open book across "developed" countries.

foepys 5y ago
SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium.
- baybal2 5y ago
  My bad
  - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
    You were not completely wrong. There is a long story of state agents trying to access SWIFT messages. At some point, SWIFT had to set up a backup data center in Switzerland in order to route European transactions within Europe. The other data center is in the Netherlands.
    - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
      ...And the American data center is not far from NSA HQ. And they do not have a data center in Asia.
jesterson 5y ago
Just a side note - it's peculiar how we use "googling" as a synonym of searching. The guy you've mentioned won't be using google and I hope he doesn't have google on the device to fetch all necessary data

underseacables 5y ago

I’m more inclined to believe the Belorussian intelligence knew ahead of time the details, and acted. Absolutely distasteful.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

It looks like the Belarus KGB was on the flight anyway - presumably the journalist was being followed/tracked: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/24/belarus-seizure-blogger-ryanair-flight-us-outcry https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/24/belarus-seizur...

andix 5y ago
I think that’s obvious. Probably they even have agents with EU citizenship that can move freely around Europe.
trhway 5y ago
Belarus official version is that Protasevich's girlfriend send a photo of him from the Athens airport to a guy (Anton Motolko) who is officially considered extremist or something like this by Belarus and who published the photo in his Telegram where monitoring it Belarus authorities saw the photo. If it is true, then the social media is definitely wet dream of state authorities like Stazi.
- SahAssar 5y ago
  I thought the official Belarus line was that they had a tip about a bomb and that when the plane landed they "happened" to find a wanted person on board? Are they now admitting that the plane was forced down to arrest him?
- kwanbix 5y ago
  Isn't Telegram e2e encrypted? Or I am understanding your comment wrong?
  - xarici_ishler 5y ago
    That's a common misconception. Telegram private chats are by default not e2e encrypted (but you can create a separate "secret chat", which will be).
    - 5y ago

andix 5y ago

I once wanted to board a plane from Havanna to Europe and because of a computer glitch my clearance for the US airspace didn’t get approved. So they nearly took off without me. After 20 minutes of trying to get it approved, they found out that I was checked in twice, and got two seats assigned. The other boarding pass got the confirmation and seemed to prevent the second confirmation. So they took away my boarding pass, and told me to hurry to the plane (a 767 parked directly in front of the gate). I jumped in 5 minutes after scheduled departure time and before I could even get seated they stated push back :D.

withinboredom 5y ago
I once managed to board the wrong plane but I was recorded as being on the other plane. I was checked into the other plane, so they couldn't take off without me, and the plane I was on had to let me off. It was a huge fiasco; I had to get off the plane after it left the gate, hitch a ride with security to the correct plane. I got chewed out by both pilots... security held me in the back of the car asking me how I did it. I really had no idea how I did it. It turns out the gate was changed and I didn't notice. I also scanned my boarding pass several times at the gate by holding it over the scanner too long. It turned out that when you've already scanned at the gate, it wouldn't tell the attendant your flight information, just that it was already scanned. They wouldn't let me on the next plane until they figured all this out. They've fixed this bug :) but that is how you successfully delay two flights and piss off some pilots.
- totalZero 5y ago
  This is the kind of thing where an airline only has itself to blame. It's disheartening that the people tasked to pilot both aircraft took issue with your actions when their own company's inept error handling was at fault.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    It turns out it’s really hard to believe someone is on the wrong plane by accident. Initially, I was accused of trying to sneak on the plane. It was an international flight.

contingencies 5y ago

Please contribute concrete knowledge to Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#International_PNR_sharing_agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#Internat... which is based on EU FOI requests not random hearsay. (Full disclosure: I made the FOI and wrote it.)