Live service phase
This page explains the live service phase for carriers that have built an interface to provide the passenger and crew data required for the e-Borders programme.
The live service phase starts when all the interfaces you will use to connect with our e-Borders system have been successfully certified.
We plan to bring carriers' routes into live service gradually, country by country. Once your routes are in live service, we will support you by providing a helpdesk that offers a single point of contact for live service problems.
We will provide more information about live service as part of our process for bringing routes into live service.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The go-live dates have been confirmed as earlier than the indicative dates we have seen previously. This makes it difficult to meet the already challenging timescales. Why have you imposed these when you have not yet finalised the interface control documents (ICDs)?
We issued previous country go-live dates in good faith and said they were subject to change. Since then, we have received 2007 data that was more complete and accurate than the data previously available. We obtained the 2007 data as soon as it was available. The 2007 data shows that there are more carriers operating to each country than the
previous data showed. Because there are more carriers to each country, we need to work faster with individual carriers to each country so we can meet commitments set by our Minister.The original dates we issued were the end dates for the 12-week go-live period for each country. The new dates now being issued to carriers, based on 2007 data, are at the start of the 12-week period for each country.The ICDs have been issued to carriers for review. We will engage with carriers to work through the interface selection and development timescales.
- What are the go-live criteria for a particular country? We need to be sure that we are receiving equal treatment in terms of percentage of volume, carriers, or routes. We have given an undertaking to work towards 100% of carriers and volume for a particular country before go-live. However, it may not always be possible to achieve this. We must retain the flexibility to require go-live of a particular country without reaching this level of coverage. We will continue to try to ensure we maintain equal treatment but ultimately we will retain overall control of when countries go live.
Terms explained
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Interface
An interface is a standard and secure way to transfer information from carrier systems to our e-Borders systems. Each interface will have its own method of transport and encryption.
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e-Borders
E-Borders is the name of our programme of electronic border control. It collects and analyses passenger and crew information provided electronically by carriers (airlines, rail and shipping companies) before travel starts on all journeys to and from the UK.