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IATA Getting Airline Travel Pass Ready By March

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Male traveler shows phone to female officer at airline check in counter for issue airplane ticket boarding pass-Airline Travel Pass-ss-featured

The International Air Transport Association (IATA)  is working to get its Airline Travel Pass to market, hoping to make it ready within a few weeks. Alan Hayden, head of the airport, passenger, and security products, is optimistic for a March launch. He thinks the majority of the world’s biggest airlines will use IATA’s digital health credential solution. 

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Airline Travel Pass

“I’ve never in my life seen a project move at such pace,” Hayden said during an IATA webinar. “We have teams of people working 12 hours a day to make this happen and to try to solve this industry problem,” he added. IATA developed Travel Pass in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. They built it on top of existing IATA solutions including Timatic, a program that verifies passenger travel documents. Hayden said Travel Pass also moved quickly because it is an extension of the contactless identity application IATA developed pre-COVID. 

Travel Pass features a mobile app that helps travelers store and manage verified certifications for COVID-19 tests or COVID-19 vaccines. It provides a secure and efficient way to store and verify COVID-19 information compared to paper processes. Hayden noted that the problem with test certificates is that it takes time for agents to verify tests given the proliferation of fake results. “Testing is very much like money – the whole belief in the system comes down to how much confidence all the actors can have in it. We need confidence in test results and vaccination results. Then we can start opening up the restrictions on borders,” he added. 

Help in Operations

Evernym, IATA’s partner in developing the airline travel pass, believes in verifiable credentials. According to Jamie Smith, senior director of business development, these credentials are more secure than other digital document types. The data exists “at the edge” rather than in a centralized database. “Unlike paper, we get the opportunity to inspect digital watermarks,” Smith says.

“That means organizations can look at those digital watermarks and say, ‘Who gave this to you and did they give it to you and only you, and lastly has it been tampered with?' And they can do those checks nearly instantly. That becomes really, really powerful,” he added. Hayden also said that the airline travel pass helps keep passenger processing moving forward.  Airlines that carry only 5 to 10% of their normal number of passengers still need 100% staffing to verify those passengers’ test results. “That quite frankly is not sustainable. So using the electronic version and using the verifiable credential airlines can push all of this off the airport, so passengers arrive completely documented,” he says.

Airline Travel Pass System Has Four Components 

The Travel Pass system has four components. The first is a registry of health requirements that lists travel, testing, and vaccine requirements for the planned destination. It checks whether the passenger’s test type and validity period fit with the itinerary. 

Second, it lists the nearby testing and vaccination centers so passengers have access to labs accepted by the destination government. Third, the system must allow testing labs to securely send test results or vaccination certificates to passengers. 

Finally, the system has the consumer-facing app, the IATA Travel Pass, which stores digital versions of their passport and test results. Travelers can use this to share results with airlines and travel authorities at the destination. 

Ongoing Testing 

“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 are one which is accurate and meets their own conditions,” Goel added. 

Singapore Airlines started using the trial version of the travel pass last December. Etihad, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Air New Zealand are also testing the pass at present. By March, the pass should roll out to most airlines.   

Reopening Will Be Slow

The airline industry hopes for the resumption of quarantine-free travel later this year. However, they expect progress to move slowly, even with the presence of the airline travel pass. In 2020, demand fell by as much as 70% worldwide compared to 2019. Most executives see between 12 to 24 months for airline travel to normalize.

IATA expects initial take-up of digital health passport to be slow:

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Do you agree that IATA’s airline travel can help provide a safer traveling experience? Or, will additional travel requirements repost to even more delays in boarding? Let us know what you think about implementing travel passes on top of passports and visa requirements.

19 Comments

19 Comments

  • Lawrence J Gubernath says:

    This is one of the best things to happen since the election of Donald Trump and the current POTUS had nothing to do with it. It takes American ingenuity not an executive order to make this happen.

  • paul f murphy says:

    let em all die ,the commie bas turds

  • paul f murphy says:

    let em all die ,the commie bas turds n ot a duplicate ,put it up google nazi`s

  • Sally says:

    Will it be voluntary or required to travel. My concern is expansion to eventually restrict inter-US travel between states, etc., which would be another loss of our freedom.

  • CM says:

    How about we make everyone not vaccinated with the experimental drug wear a bright yellow star on their sleeves so we know who is dangerous and dirty. Or better yet, let’s make everyone insert under their skin a chip that has their whole medical record on it and prevent anyone who doesn’t comply with ever expanding government health edicts from being able to function in society. After all, this continually mutating lab-created virus with a 99.7% survival rate for people under 65 is the greatest threat to the planet. We should definitely give up all of our rights to the corporate-fascist officials in charge who have always taken such great care of us. We have to “stay safe” under government control so we can all live lives not worth living.

  • Anonymous says:

    Dido to previous comment from CM

  • Tom says:

    No way will I allow big government to inject me with God knows what, what happened to land of the free and home of the brave?

  • Gene says:

    Screw them I have rights they are trying to take away

  • Jo Blow says:

    Ditto ditto to CM. This is fascism & absolutely not because of a “virus”. These people are evil & we need to stand up to this tyranny!

  • Lucy Lund says:

    Get your private pilot’s license while you can and fly for yourself, at least within the U.S. I am NOT allowing the government to force a fundamental change in my body so that I can exercise what is supposed to be my fundamental right to travel by whatever means available. I think the airlines are going to be surprised by how much business they’re going to lose PERMANENTLY because of this. Seems odd that they’re putting in place a permanent solution for a problem that we’re told will go away once we reach “herd immunity”, doesn’t it?

  • Terence Norton says:

    this is not government mandate yet, it is corporate mandate, who has government in sucking on thier teets this is really the begining of the end of rights in this country. Animals like pelosi, cuomo and deblasio are self righteous morans, who are expecting all to become sheep because they will all profit from this EXPERIMENTAL GENE THERAPY VACCINE

  • Larry M says:

    This is an amazing effort to insert a corporate entity into the mainstream of life where fears have been stoked to enhance government power and peasant compliance. It is a solution without a legitimate problem. It would be enlightening to see where the political contributions of the execs have gone. A pox upon their houses.

  • Peggy S Edmonson says:

    I dont plan on flying anymore because I dont agree with this crap. Its just another way for this regime to control us. I agree we shouldnt have to get this vaccine. How many other flus have been around and it was never an issue on getting the flu shot before, and now all of a sudden it is. Control Control Control

  • Naaman Clark says:

    If it will bring things back to, some type of normalcy, let’s give it a try. It’s very frustrating to be living like this. Well, this is just a sign of what to come when rule us. It’s coming. Biden and the Democrats are handing this country over to 🇨🇳 China, no if and buts about it. The writings are on the walls. Who can’t see it, I feel sorry for them. Pretty soon, it won’t be God bless 🇺🇸 America. It’s going to be goddamn America.

  • Karen Case says:

    Since the vaccine does protect people from getting COVID, why does card have any validity other than restrict, control and track people. Vaccinated people are told to still wear masks and, guess what, they are now talking about a third shot for it to be effective. I will not fly any communist airline requiring it to fly. This panic is manufactured and there are thousands of doctors who will tell you this is true. This vaccine is very dangerous. How many people would take an experimental prescription drug that has not had lengthy human testing and no liability to the manufacturers?

  • Karen Case says:

    Correction: Since the vaccine does NOT protect.

  • Billie says:

    Big brother is here. If we have to show vaccination cards to travel — then stop letting illegals in without any verification of why they are, why they are traveling to America and let them show their vaccination records too.

    One more nose under the tent and before long we will all be wearing stars on our chest to prove we are healthy enough to live in America.

  • Dian Cecht says:

    So does the Leftist mantra of “my body, my choice” also apply here; or,
    is that only valid for murdering babies?

  • mali says:

    Fascism is upon us bigtime. did you READ all the requirements???? Seriously, globalist issues here; total control freaks behind this. No freedom-loving person who has done his due diligence will accept this. I hope there is widespread resistance to this horrible group.

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