IATA in talks with Indian airlines to provide passenger-friendly app for international travel

Global airlines group- International Air Transport Association (IATA) is in talks with Indian airlines for its travel pass, which will not only help passengers in seamless air travel but also will be in accordance with governments norms

Global airlines group- International Air Transport Association (IATA) is in talks with Indian airlines for its travel pass, which will not only help passengers in seamless air travel but also will be in accordance with governments norms. Travel pass is a digital process of travel which will eliminate the lengthy physical documentation work, thereby saving time for passengers, airport operators as well as the airlines.

Chhatrapti Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT Photo)

“Travel pass enables passengers to create a ‘digital passport’, verify their (Covid-19) test/vaccination, meets the regulations and share test or vaccination certificates with authorities to facilitate travel. It also enables passengers to find accurate information on travel, testing and (eventually) vaccine requirements for their journey,” IATA said on Tuesday.

IATA carried out trial runs for travel pass app with Singapore Airlines in the last quarter of 2020. This year, it carried out trials with airlines like Emirates, Qatar Airways amongst others. After running these trials, IATA has declared to globally roll out the travel pass from next month.

IATA said its travel pass is a digital solution that addresses challenges of fraud paper certificates and hence has been built with data security, convenience and verification as top priorities.

As per IATA, integrated registry of travel requirements in the app will help passengers in getting precise information on travel and entry requirements for all destinations. It will also include a registry of laboratories and in due course it will also provide details of nearby vaccination centres. This will make it more convenient for passengers to find testing centres and labs at their departure city which would meet the requirements of their destination.

The association also said that this platform will also enable verified labs and test centres to securely send test results or vaccination certificates to passengers.

Specifying the importance of using the travel pass, IATA said, “The travel pass is modular and interoperable, it is based on standards, it is proven and trusted.”

The association also said the travel pass can be used for contactless travel – that will continue long even after the pandemic. Assuring privacy in the travel pass app, IATA also said that passengers will have the sole right to share their data and they can delete their data anytime on their app.

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Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) has facilitated the distribution of approximately 43 million doses of vaccines to 8.5 million doses in India and 34.5 million doses across the globe. The standard operating procedures (SOPs) implemented by the airport saw the terminal register an average cargo processing time of just 10 minutes for domestic delivery and 25 minutes for international (right from goods acceptance to dispatch at the ramp). CSMIA has distributed approximately 113 tons of vaccines to over 57 destinations. This includes over 29 international and 28 domestic destinations. The city airport also witnessed the highest export of vaccines to Dhaka (nine million doses), followed by Morocco (with six million doses) and Brazil (with four million doses).

On the domestic front, a total of 2.1 million doses of vaccines were distributed to Raipur, Cochin and Guwahati. The airport has supported over 18 airlines for the vaccine distribution across the globe. Air India, Emirates and Royal Air Morocco emerged as the top three airlines operating the highest number of vaccines to international destination with 15 million, 6.1 million and 6 million doses respectively whereas SpiceJet, Indigo and Go Air were the top airlines catering to the domestic destinations with 3.1 million, 2.7 million and 1.5 million doses respectively.