IATA says Digital Airline Pass Will Be Ready ‘Within Weeks’

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says it will have its digital Covid Travel Pass ready “within weeks,” a breakthrough it believes will lead to reestablishing international air travel more quickly.

The digital pass will be an app to be downloaded on a smartphone, according to the British Broadcasting Corp., and will verify that a passenger has had either a negative COVID-19 test or been vaccinated against the virus.

It also verifies they were administered by an approved authority.

“The key issue is one of confidence. Passengers need to be confident that the testing they’ve taken is accurate and will allow them to enter the country.” said Vinoop Goel, IATA’s regional director of airports and external relations. “And then governments need to have the confidence that the tests that the passengers claim to have is one which is accurate and meets their own conditions.”

The app will be available on iOS and Android platforms and is expected to be free. Singapore Airlines was the first airline to start trials of the travel pass in December, with Etihad, Emirates, Qatar Airways and Air New Zealand among the other airlines currently conducting trials.

“We are currently working with a number of airlines worldwide and learning from these pilots. And the plan is to go live in March,” Goel said. “So basically we expect to have a fully functional working system over the next few weeks.”

Ralph Hollister, Analyst, Travel & Tourism at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, said that the IATA Travel Pass is “not the golden ticket to an instant recovery for the global travel sector,” but it will certainly help.

According to GlobalData, international air arrivals decreased by 48.1 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. A GlobalData survey found that 52 percent of global respondents are either ‘quite’ or ‘extremely’ concerned regarding restrictions on international travel. IATA’s Travel Pass could help to ease these ongoing apprehensions. As the app confirms if a passenger has had the appropriate COVID-19 tests or vaccines required to enter a country, this will assure travelers that there will be no sudden surprises when they enter the destination, such as restrictions on movement.

“However, global rollout of the app could be difficult due to the insistence by some governments on paper documentation for proof of vaccination or negative test, meaning that some persuasion may be needed for specific countries,” Hollister said. “Furthermore, app rollout could be difficult in developing nations where levels of smartphone ownership may not be as high in comparison to developed countries. This could mean that the rollout is seen as something that increases global inequality in terms of which nations can and can’t freely travel.”

That said, Hollister noted that “the rollout of a digital Covid Travel Pass will be beneficial to the global travel sector and will increase the likelihood of a meaningful start to recovery in 2021.”