jphripjah

I'm a US citizen, I book a lot of flights to the US. The airline website often has prompts to enter passport details and says these must be entered 72 hours before the flight.

What happens if someone doesn't do it? Are people, including US citizens, being barred from travel to the USA when they arrive at the airport because they didn't enter their passport details 72 hours in advance?

GUWonder

I book most of my flights to the US within 72 hours of travel. Often enough my passport info is not in the booking until I check-in. As a US citizen on a US passport, I've not been prevented from flying to the US because of this.

Often1

You can purchase a ticket at the counter up to whatever the cutoff time is for the carrier's ticketing. As a USN, you won't be denied boarding and you, of course, can't be denied entry.

It simply becomes a close to certainty that you will be subject to greater security scrutiny at departure, e.g. "SSSS".

GUWonder

That second paragraph above has been anything but true in the experience of the many passengers and myself whom I have booked for travel where the passport info was blank up until check-in time.

Doc Savage

He never lets the facts get in the way of a good grumpy post.

jphripjah

Why do the airlines refer to it as "mandatory" to provide the info 72 hours before?

GUWonder

The airlines are mandated by the USG to transmit to the USG all the required airline passenger info they have at 72 hours prior to departure. But they also have a mandatory requirement to transmit updates later.

Some people think we now live in a post-factual world. It isn't post-factual as long as I'm around.

aidy

Ive had my company flights department book me a flight when i was in the airport once before, (as my original plan was cancelled due to a LH strike!) with no issues and a non us passport

bbtrvl

This is an airline requirement. If you do not provide passport info 72 hours before departure, or at time of booking when booking within 72 hours, then the airline reserves the choice to deny you check-in or boarding.

As it's up to the airline, you can expect that the enforcement will probably vary a lot between airlines, airports, and maybe even check-in agents.

There should not be any problem upon arrival. Assuming you were allowed to board, then your passport information was transmitted to CBP on time (unless the airline massively screwed up). The "real" deadline for the airline is something like 30 minutes before airplane doors close.

I don't think late APIS passport information or lack thereof affects getting SSSS, but maybe some airlines could force SSSS on non-compliers if they wanted.

GUWonder

Every major alliance carrier to the US flies lots of passengers on flights booked 2-24 hours in advance of travel, and the 72 hour thing alone doesn't result in the scare-mongering outcomes people put up about such travels.

bbtrvl

Nearly all of them are OK with receiving APIS information at time of booking when within 72 hours, and state so explicitly.

It would be stupid for an airline to raise a fuss over late APIS information of paying customers. Sometimes airline agents do stupid things.

I prefer to dot my i's and cross my t's. At least when it only takes a minute extra. Then I always have a leg to stand on when (not if) someone else screws up badly.

I do admit that it does seem like the airline is scaremongering people into thinking that CBP is requiring this.

GUWonder

The airline isn't really scaremongering passengers with this.

The real scaremongering is acting as if the operating airline for US-arriving/US-departing flights may cancel ticketed flights because a passenger hasn't submittted passport info 72 hour before travel. It is not routine.

This 72 hour DHS requirement is a requirement on operating airlines, and the DHS requirement on operating airlines just doesn't hit passengers in the way the scaremongers peddle it. US-bound flights booked within 72 hours of flight without passenger passport data simply just doesn't get the passenger booted.

bbtrvl

Oh, I do not believe they would ever cancel a ticket because of late APIS. I'm thinking more of the times when the airline makes a mistake (usually a very expensive one) and starts digging in their CoC for a reason to avoid making it right.

I don't mean to be scaremongering, I only like to lay out the cold facts, because these are the rules of the game we're in.

GUWonder

If an airline rep brings up the COC to deny transport, the airline/airline rep has almost certainly decided to do what it has done without even fishing around for an excuse related to a "72 hours rule". If the 72-hour DHS thing for airlines is really something for a passenger to worry about, then that passenger almost certainly has bigger problems than just the absence of passport info in the PNR at 72 hours prior to scheduled flight departure.

Putting in passport data "too early" can sometimes cause more problems than leaving it out until showing up at the airport to check-in with the passport. That's a cold fact too, and it is more of an issue than not putting in the data online 72 hours or more before the trip. Errors from manually entering passport data is more commonly causing hassles for passengers than machine-reading-based entries of erroneous passport data. Another reason to do this with a check-in kiosk or check-in agent at the airport at time of at-airport check-in? Perhaps.

cCANVAS20

Hi, I am new to this! Does anyone know if the 72 hour rule of registering my passport information before a flight from UK to US with Norweigan Airlines is mandatory enough for them to not let me on the flight? My flight is on Friday, and I have just realized this rule, so have only done 48 hours before flight! Please let me know if anyone has experienced this problem with Noreigan airlines?

Thanks