AirAsia world’s first airline to pilot Interpol I-Checkit system

Asia’s largest low cost carrier, AirAsia, will adopt Interpol’s I-Checkit system to screen the passports of all its passengers against the world police body’s Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database.

The system, expected to be implemented later this month, is part of the airline’s ongoing efforts to enhance international travel security.

Photo: (L-R) Aireen Omar, AirAsia CEO; Roland K. Noble, Interpol secretary general;  Azran Osman-Rani, AirAsia X CEO

When the system is operational AirAsia will become the first airline in the world to integrate I-Checkit with its own check in systems during the passenger check-in phase across its entire international network. Passenger passport numbers will be compared against Interpol’s SLTD database, which contains more than 40 million records from 167 countries.

In the event a passenger’s passport registers a positive match against the database, AirAsia will refer the passenger to local authorities. Interpol’s procedures will simultaneously be engaged to notify all relevant Interpol National Central Bureaus worldwide.

If there is a positive match registered via I-Checkit, alerts for further verification will also be sent to Interpol’s National Central Bureau of the country that owns the travel document data, and to Interpol’s General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, France.

Interpol secretary general, Ronald K Noble, said this partnership would raise the bar across the industry for passenger safety and security by preventing individuals using stolen or lost passports from boarding international flights.

“Airlines will no longer have to depend solely on countries screening passports to keep passengers safe from terrorists and other criminals who use stolen passports to board flights. Like AirAsia, they will be able to do it themselves as well,” he added.

The I-Checkit system will be deployed across all of AirAsias international operations, covering a network of 100 airports across Asia and 600 international flights per day to more than 20 countries worldwide.

Currently, less than 10 countries systematically screen passenger passports against Interpol’s SLTD database, with approximately four out of every 10 passports on international flights not screened against Interpol’s database.

Travelport extends marketing expetisei to Hangzhou and Ezfly

Travelport and the Hangzhou Tourism Commission are cooperating in a new destination marketing campaign to increase destination awareness and promote tourism to the Chinese city.

The marketing partnership consists of various awareness programmes and aims to encourage travellers from France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States to visit Hangzhou. The city is the fourth largest metropolitan area in China, and is ranked amongst the most beautiful places in China.

Zhao Hongzhong, vice director of Hangzhou Tourism Commission, said, “We plan to leverage their global footprint and industry expertise to increase top of mind awareness when travel agents provide destination recommendations for their customers.”

Travelport Partner Marketing is one of the core elements of Travelport’s Beyond Air initiatives consisting of payments, hospitality and advertising. The initiative helps travel suppliers and organizations increase revenue by maximising communications across Travelport’s global distribution network.

In a related development Ezfly, one of the largest and fastest growing OTA in Taiwan, renewed a new multi-year agreement with Travelport, extending their 14-year partnership.

As part of the agreement, Travelport will continue to provide Ezfly with the latest travel technology and travel content as they expand their operations.

The Taiwan-based OTA has experienced unprecedented growth in the past two years with its online auto-ticketing and extension of corporate services.

British satellite firm, Inmarsat, offers free global airline tracking service

Global mobile satellite communications services provider, Inmarsat, has proposed to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) a free global airline tracking service, to be implemented immediately.

This follows the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. Inmarsat helped to reveal that MH 370 could have ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean.

The proposed service is being offered to all 11,000 commercial passenger aircraft, which are already equipped with an Inmarsat satellite connection, virtually 100% of the world’s long haul commercial fleet.

Additionally, the service extends to what it calls a “black box in the cloud” that could stream historic and real-time flight data recorder and voice recorder information to authorised aviation safety recipients or aviation regulators.

Rupert Pearce, CEO of Inmarsat, said: “Because of the universal nature of existing Inmarsat aviation services, our proposals can be implemented right away on all ocean-going commercial aircraft using equipment that is already installed.

“Furthermore, our leading aviation safety partners are fully supportive of expanded use of the ADS-C Service through the Inmarsat network. This offer responsibly, quickly and at little or no cost to the industry, addresses in part the problem brought to light by the recent tragic events around MH370.”

Myanmar, Indonesia ink deal for visa free travel

Myanmar and Indonesia have signed a visa exemption agreement, which allows reciprocal 30-day, visa-free travel for citizens of both countries,

The agreement was reached on the sidelines of the 24th ASEAN Summit, which was held (10-11 May) in Naypydaw, Myanmar’s capital, and is expected to be effective this month.

Indonesian minister of foreign affairs Marty Natalegawa, said the agreement would tighten the connectivity between the two countries in the tourism sector, people-to-people contact, and economic and investment cooperation.”

His Myanmar counterpart, Wunna Muang Lwin, added the agreement would increase bilateral trade between the two countries to US$1 billion by 2016.

This latest agreement is a move to have a common visa for the ASEAN region with the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community 2015.

Myanmar has already signed visa-free agreements with Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines and Vietnam, and is currently in talks with Malaysia and Singapore to provide the same facility.