Digi Yatra facility at Delhi’s T2 from April

Confirming the development, an official from the ministry of civil aviation said, “Various surveys are being done to expand the Digi Yatra facility to Delhi’s T2, which handles 49,000 passengers daily.”

Passengers travelling from Terminal 2 (T2) of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport will be able to use the union government’s ambitious Digi Yatra system starting from April, officials aware of the development said on Thursday.

The Digi Yatra facility will allow passengers to link their travel and identity documents together and create a facial scan beforehand, which will do away with the need for them to show their boarding passes or identity cards when they arrive at an airport, drop their bags, or proceed for boarding. (HT Archive)

The Digi Yatra facility will allow passengers to link their travel and identity documents together and create a facial scan beforehand, which will do away with the need for them to show their boarding passes or identity cards when they arrive at an airport, drop their bags, or proceed for boarding. It has been designed to ensure a seamless and hassle-free passenger experience, without the need for the verification of tickets and ID cards at multiple touch points.

Confirming the development, an official from the ministry of civil aviation said, “Various surveys are being done to expand the Digi Yatra facility to Delhi’s T2, which handles 49,000 passengers daily.”

“Detailed surveys have to be done before the infrastructure is set to install the facility at T2. Final communications between the airport operator and ministry are ongoing. While the process of installation of Digi Yatra at T2 has caught speed, we expect the facility to be available for the passengers by April,” an airport official told HT.

The expenditure on the implementation of Digi Yatra is done by the respective airport operators.

The Digi Yatra facility was first launched in India on December 1, 2022 at IGI’s T3 and the Bengaluru and Varanasi airports, and will be introduced at the Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Hyderabad airports by March.

“#DigiYatra service to be expanded to Vijaywada, Kolkata, Pune & Hyderabad airports. With 3 lakh downloads, the service is making air travel more seamless and efficient for domestic passengers travelling out of Delhi, Bengaluru, & Varanasi,” aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had tweeted on January 20.

Government officials said from the Digi Yatra launch on December 1, around 5% of the daily footfall of 122,000 passengers at Delhi’s T3 use the facility, against the target of 10%. However, at Varanasi airport, of the 4,000 daily passengers, around 1,000 use the technology, officials said, adding that SpiceJet and GoAir are yet to start their Digi Yatra operations from this airport.

“The facility will be further expanded once 10% of the total passenger footfalls in each of the airports start using Digi Yatra,” a second ministry official said. “The response by Varanasi airport is tremendous and we expect the numbers to go up in other airports too.”