Originally Posted by
ESpen36
Actually, "information of citizens boarding an international flight" is definitely part of APIS. Look
here for the complete details (PDF from the Federal Register).
Note that it says that APIS
"requires that electronic manifest information for passengers onboard commercial aircraft arriving in and departing from the United States...be vetted by DHS against a government-established and maintained terrorist watch list prior to departure of the aircraft"
(
bold emphasis mine)
CBP does not have full and normal access to all APIS hits when scanning your passport entering the United States at primary. If one leaves on a one ticket on Delta in january and return on a seperate PNR via BA in March, that does not initially pop up. Especially if one has multiple US passports. I have had three US passports at once (tourist 10 year, tourist 2 year, and official 5 year) but now just have official and tourist. Running of APIS for watchlists is different from CBP PNR records and the system that validates passports (which multiple countries have access too).
Also, one does not need to fill out APIS info for all transit avenues out of the United States.