WILLEMSTAD - The Ministry of Justice, police force of Curaçao, known as the Korps Politie Curaçao (KPC) in conjunction with Curacao Airport Holding (CAH) culminated a 4-year process to increase border security at the Airport. After a whole year of testing and amidst a global pandemic COVID-19, on December 16, 2020, the Advanced Passenger Information System (hereafter referred to as APIS) is officially launched into production and is live.
The APIS is an essential part of improving the safety and passenger flow at the airport. In 2016, The Ministry of Justice and CAH joined forces to innovate the immigration process at the airport. After experiencing excessive complaints regarding the long waiting times at immigrations, CAH approached the Ministry of Justice with a plan to digitally innovate the immigration process. The APIS is part 2 in a 4-step process which CAH intends to realize with the Ministry of Justice. The goal is to increase border security and innovate passenger facilitation while ensuring a swift and pleasant passenger experience. The 1st part of this process was the digitization of the border clearance process which took place in 2015-2016 and culminated with the implementation of the eGates. The second phase focused on increasing border security by connecting to global databanks such as Interpol and APIS and other Justice data bases. The 3rd and fourth phase focus on the implementation of facilitation devices and solutions which will reshape the way passengers clear immigrations through Curaçao.
This project is part of a bigger trajectory for CAH and forms part of its strategic ambition which focuses on the enhancement of passenger facilitation throughout the entire arrivals process. In 2015, CAH worked to align the airport stakeholders to better the passenger experience when arriving at the Curaçao International Airport. In this alignment project, CAH outlined 4 touchpoints that needed to be addressed and innovated. As immigrations is the first touchpoint for passengers when they arrive in Curaçao, the emphasis was primarily focused on enhancing the Airport immigration process. The completion of the APIS Go-Live marks a milestone for CAH and allows for CAH to continue to innovate the entire arrivals process by working with the airport stakeholders to digitize the baggage claim process, and the customs process.