CUSS2 - The Future

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After 20+ years of the CUSS 1 standards, the aviation industry is finally moving on to CUSS 2.0 — a modern, secure, and flexible standard built for today’s digital-first passenger journey. Airports and Airlines that embraced the transition early are already seeing the benefits: stronger cybersecurity, smoother passenger flows, and future-proof infrastructure.

This move will be dictated by the needs of the Airports and Airlines to be able to secure their environments as well as improving 'speed to market' to keep up with the ever changing passenger processing experience.

CUSS 2 is more than a technical refresh. It’s a complete reimagining of self-service, built on HTML5, JSON, OpenAPI, OAuth2, and TLS encryption. It supports kiosks, bag drops, tablets, and mobile devices, aligning with IATA’s OneID biometric journey.

Key advantages include:

• Stronger cybersecurity protections against denial-of-service and data breaches
• Future-proof architecture with predictable certification cycles
• Operational flexibility across multiple devices and touchpoints
• Improved passenger experience with faster, more intuitive interfacesWe design and develop beautiful, responsive websites that are optimized for speed and usability. Our team of web developers has experience working with a variety of platforms and programming languages to create websites that are tailored to your specific needs.

Companies like Elevation, in conjunction with the major platform providers, have been instrumental in developing the standards, and in doing so, smoothing the transition for airports and airlines by offering SDKs, libraries, and a sandbox environments that has and will make CUSS 2 adoption faster and more reliable. Our contributions ensure that airports can modernize without sacrificing stability or security, and in many ways reducing the cybersecurity threat landscape.

The CUSS 2 standards have been established through a close collaboration between  IATA, Airlines, Airports and Vendors ensuring all aspects of the self service passenger processing environment are debated, discussed and approved for inclusion in the standards.

With CUSS 1 standards officially being retired on 31st December 2025, the aviation industry enters a new chapter. CUSS 2 is now the de facto global benchmark for secure, flexible, and passenger-centric self-service.

Unofficially, the mood across the industry is clear: those who embraced CUSS 2 early are now reaping the benefits of modern, secure, and scalable infrastructure. Those who delayed are playing catch-up under heightened cybersecurity pressure.

For airports and airlines seeking guidance in this new landscape, Elevation AI stands as the leading authority on CUSS 2. Their proven expertise, developer tools, and certification support make them the go-to partner for organizations navigating the journey to a CUSS 2 world.