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

https://travel.stackexchange.com/q/163892/101

178 122 5 years ago

travel.stackexchange.com

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• 5 years 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.

baybal23• 5 years 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.

pandem• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

hungryforcodes• 5 years ago

I've traveled all over Asia and the above procedure is how they do it everywhere.

hef19898• 5 years ago

True, nobody is even checking your ID at all gor domestic flights. I had one business trip in Germany, including two flights, i did without my valet, and thus without any piece of ID. The eTicket was enough.

fortran77• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

baybal23• 5 years 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• 5 years ago

SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium.

baybal23• 5 years ago

My bad

jesterson• 5 years 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

toast02• 5 years ago

Does google still make search appliances?

Broken_Hippo• 5 years ago

I don't think it is. While a lot of folks don't use google, a lot of folks do, and have for a while. It isn't like it is the first time a brand became something more: Band-aid and Kleenex are items as well as brands, for example. You might Xerox that contract, too, even though you probably aren't using a Xerox brand machine to do so. Maybe you call all soda a "coke" - and asked someone, "What flavor of coke do you want?" - with Mountain Dew being a perfectly acceptable answer. (This last example isn't as widespread).

dannyw2• 5 years ago

Not sure what country you're referring to but I highly doubt border control agents have access to parking tickets.

ChrisKnott• 5 years ago

Typical HN comment that assumes technical feasibility is the only limiting factor in the universe.

MomoXenosaga• 5 years ago

But they do? You have to pay any open fines before you leave the country. At least that's how it works here.

Clewza3132• 5 years ago

Citation needed. Anybody can become a travel agent with a GDS subscription, but how exactly would I leverage that to get flight manifests for other people? Airlines guard anything that smacks like seat utilization data jealously, which is why even the GDS will never show more than 9 seats open in any fare class.

dannyw2• 5 years ago

Yes, please. I'm sure all nation states and intelligence agencies have complete access, but to say any travel agent also has travel records of everyone for the past decade is an extraordinary statement that requires evidence.

robjan• 5 years ago

You type LP/ABC123/MAY25 and pull up the loading list.

This doesn't give you information about load factors or overbooking profiles which is the actually commercially sensitive information.

_trampeltier• 5 years ago

Yes, as far I know, every at least international flight from EU, the US gets the full information about every passenger, inclusive payment (credit card info).

azepoi• 5 years ago

I remember a C3 talk showing how ridiculously insecure these booking systems (GDS) were. You should assume every intelligence agency has their hands on this data, as it is shared among so many parties.

https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7964-where_in_the_world_is_carme...

underseacables• 5 years ago

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

helsinkiandrew• 5 years 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-seizur...

andix2• 5 years ago

I think that’s obvious. Probably they even have agents with EU citizenship that can move freely around Europe.

trhway• 5 years 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• 5 years 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?

kwanbix2• 5 years ago

Isn't Telegram e2e encrypted? Or I am understanding your comment wrong?

matkoniecz• 5 years ago

Belarus official version

Why it would be treated seriously, especially after they blatantly lied about supposed bomb? And obviously fake bomb threat from Hamas of all things?

odiroot• 5 years ago

It would have been ironic if the flight was overbooked and they couldn't buy a ticket/board.

capableweb• 5 years ago

If you're associated with the Belarus KGB it's probably not too hard to have some passengers suddenly missing their flight for one or another reason. Probably they don't even need to buy a ticket, flash your badge at the airport and most guards/staff there lets you through.

kokx• 5 years ago

Within the EU, flights rarely get overbooked. Especially on cheap flights like with Ryanair, the reimbursement that the airline has to provide in case of overbooking can easily be more than 10x the ticket value.

useryman• 5 years ago

It was a ryanair flight. They know exactly how many people are going on their planes, because every unsold seat could be another €20 and someone looking for a return ticket.

andix2• 5 years 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.

withinboredom4• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

contingencies• 5 years ago

Please contribute concrete knowledge to Wikipedia at 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.)

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

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