Business Travel Tips

Starting early 2009 U.S. air passengers will be required to give full name and their date of birth when buying a plane ticket, Department of Homeland Security officials announced yesterday. Airlines will submit personal information collected from travelers to Department of Homeland Security, which will compare the information against terrorist watch lists and then send the results to the airlines.

(photo by debaird - CC license)

Through this move, so-called “Secure Flight” proposal, the Department of Homeland Security hopes to improve aviation security also with the number of false matches drastically reduced.

A centralized checking system will replace the screening performed autonomously by airlines whom currently match reservation names against lists provided to them by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

As airlines will have to send data to the government at least 72 hours before flight departures, they will likely have to bring changes to their booking systems and set up adequate networks to interact with the government’s.