Member's Home Forums General Discussion Mexico Mexican APIS – The Latest

Without getting into the boring details, the following is the latest on the developments on Mexican APIS.
The bottom line is that there are now 3 ways to present Mexican APIS:

1. Per the 2013 Mexican Immigration APIS regulations, ARINC is the ONLY authorized vendor for submitting a Mexican APIS manifest using the UN/EDIFACT standard. You can sign up directly with them for an account and submit through their portal.

2. The Mexican Immigration authorities have created an email address (apisinm@inami.gob.mx) to which you can send a properly completed and formatted ARINC Excel 1.2C spreadsheet. To use this option you are limited to 4 trips to/from Mexico per year. If you exceed that number you need to find another option to submit your Mexican APIS. Some pilots have indicated receiving emails form Mexican Immigration indicating the 4 trip limit.
Pros: You don’t need to sign up for a paid service to comply
Cons: The email address appears to be an email server which re-sends your email to the ARINC service but this email server does not return the response from the ARINC service. This means that you will not have proof whether your Excel file was successfully uploaded to ARINC or if it was rejected due to errors and never received by ARINC. This could set you up for a violation without even knowing it.

3. You can use a 3’rd party service provider to submit your Mexican APIS. Some 3’rd party service providers submit your APIS manifest directly through their account with ARINC outlined in point #1 above. Others submit your APIS manifest by sending the Excel file to the email address in point #2.

The other issues:
As early as October, 2023, Mexican Immigration headquarters began sending internal circulars to their offices at international airports reminding the local Immigration officers that the Mexican APIS regulations existed and that they were to start warning private operators to comply or face enforcement actions. There were several more circulars sent between November, 2023 and the end of May, 2024 with an ongoing the emphasis on enforcement action against private aircraft. Mexican Immigration has the ability to analyze the APIS data being submitted to the ARINC server in order to verify the accuracy and timeliness of the data you have submitted and determine compliance with the Mexican regulations.

Starting in February of 2024 we began to hear of penalty cases being issued and fines being assessed on private operators for a number of issues. Of the specific cases where we were able to get factual information, some cases were the result of errors from manifests submitted through a 3’rd party app which never appeared on the ARINC server. In other cases, manifests submitted through the Mexican Immigration central email address were also not visible. All of this has created confusion for some operators and a number of Mexican Immigration officials at certain Mexican International airports have resorted to requesting copies of the Excel spreadsheet being sent to them via email which creates a risk of personally identifiable information being shared through insecure channels to unknown persons. Mexican Immigration headquarters has indicated in their last official communication that sending these emails is not necessary if you have complied with points 1, 2 or 3 above.