Advance passenger information and PNR collection by country

How to read this table

API is the passport data a passenger gives at check-in. Interactive API, or iAPI, means the government replies to the airline before boarding with a board or no-board message. PNR is the booking record held by the airline ⁴.

Each row says what kind of source backs it. A national law or agency page carries the most weight. Some rows rest only on a summary published by an airline or a UN programme. Those rows say so, with the date of the summary. All Nippon Airways publishes a list of the countries where it must send API or PNR. That list has no page date. We checked it on 19 October 2026 ⁷. The UN goTravel figures are as of December 2025 ⁵.

"Not confirmed" means we found no source we could open that settles the point. It does not mean the country lacks the system. Status is as of 19 October 2026. A row that gives another date is as of that date.

Global counts from UN and ICAO papers

UN Security Council resolutions 2178 (2014), 2396 (2017) and 2482 (2019) made API and PNR collection mandatory for all member states, according to CTED ¹. Uptake has been slower than the resolutions ask. In May 2020 CTED wrote that 86 member states had API, less than half the UN total. It counted 48 with PNR, just under a quarter ¹.

Two papers that the United States presented to ICAO regional meetings in 2024 cite the IATA API-PNR World Tracker. They give 97 states with API rules in force and 64 with PNR rules in force. They say about 51 states had API in 2014 and about 12 had PNR in 2017 ^2,3. In the North American, Central American and Caribbean region, 32 of 41 states and territories had API and 7 had PNR ². In the Africa region, 5 of 48 states had API and 2 had PNR ³. The papers give no date for the tracker figures.

Country table

The table runs by region: the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Oceania and Africa. Legal basis is the law or rule named by the source. Where a row cites only the ANA list, it shows that the airline must send the data on flights to or from that country. It does not show the national law ⁷.

Europe: one directive, many national laws

In the EU, PNR rests on Directive 2016/681. Each member state sets up a Passenger Information Unit that receives PNR from airlines ⁸. In July 2020 the European Commission reported that 24 of 26 member states had notified full transposition. Slovenia had notified partial transposition and Spain none. The Commission referred Spain to the Court of Justice on 2 July 2020 ⁹. All member states but one had extended PNR collection to flights inside the EU ⁹.

API follows a newer law. Regulation (EU) 2025/12 of 19 December 2024 requires carriers flying into the EU to collect API from the travel document by automated means and send it through a central router ¹⁰.

Switzerland is outside the EU. Its parliament passed a Passenger Name Records Act in a final vote on 21 March 2025. The referendum period has expired. fedpol says the act should take effect at the end of 2026 and that a new unit at fedpol will run it ³⁰.

UN-supported systems: goTravel and CARICOM

The UN Countering Terrorist Travel Programme gives states software and training to use API and PNR. It works with 91 member states. 69 receive full technical help ⁶. Its software is called goTravel.

As of December 2025, seven countries ran goTravel in full: Botswana, Georgia, Luxembourg, Moldova, Mongolia, Norway and the Philippines. Algeria, Argentina, Switzerland and Sierra Leone were onboarding. More than 15 others were preparing to adopt it ⁵. The UN says the system processed over 63 million passenger records in the first three quarters of 2025 ⁵.

In the Caribbean, CARICOM IMPACS runs a shared API system through its Joint Regional Communications Centre. It began for the 2007 Cricket World Cup and screens about 40 million air and sea passengers a year ²⁶. The JRCC page does not list the member states that take part.

What the table cannot show

A yes in the table means the country asks airlines for the data. It does not show how well the data is used, who can see it or how long it is kept. A few sources give retention. Canada keeps API and PNR for three and a half years ¹³. New Zealand keeps PNR for three years ¹⁹. India keeps PNR for five years and then masks it ²¹.

Several rows rest on press reports. Nigeria's row comes from a statement by its Immigration Service chief reported on 1 August 2025 ²⁸. The UAE row comes from a 2015 report ³¹. Bangladesh's row reflects a 2018 proposal, and we could not confirm whether the rules were made ³⁵. Israel's row reflects a bill at first reading in February 2023 ³².

Readers who need a definitive answer for one country should check the national border agency. IATA keeps the fullest tracker, but it is not public.