The CARICOM eAPIS is going away

On September 30, the CARICOM eAPIS portal (the website operators have used for years to submit Advance Passenger Information) is being retired.

In its place is a new system called CARICOM MDEX, which is short for Manifest Digital Exchange. You can find it at carimdex.org, and it’s about to take over as the region’s official APIS platform.

Before and after. The official change over date is September 30.

What does this mean operationally?

If you’re unfamiliar with CARICOM, it refers to The Caribbean Community. It consists of fifteen member states that span the Caribbean including Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad to name a few. You can view the full list below:

All flights (both commercial and private) are required to submit Advance Passenger Information (API) before departing or arriving in a CARICOM member state. If you need a refresher, see the official APIS submission rules.

This isn’t new – nothing about what you submit is changing, it’s just how you submit it. From October 1, the old eAPIS site will be turned off. Moving forward, you will need to use the MDEX portal to submit API instead.

What to do right now

We suggest you don’t wait until the deadline to get set up. If you leave it to the last minute and run into issues, you won’t be able to dispatch.

You can register for MDEX now. A full PDF has been produced with instructions on how to register and submit your APIS details, and it all seems pretty straight forward. See the MDEX registration guide.

There’s also a bit of housekeeping on the back-end. Don’t forget to update any automated upload process that is tied to the old system. If your operation submits API data automatically instead of logging in manually, don’t assume it will just keep working. MDEX is a new platform, so anything linked to the old caricomeapis.org will need to be redirected with new credentials. Take a look at the Portal API Docs link on the MDEX site for more info.