The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has unveiled key design elements of the IATA Travel Pass, a mobile app to help travellers easily and securely manage their travel in line with any government requirements for COVID-19 testing or vaccine information.
"Testing is the immediate solution to safely re-open borders and re-connect people. And eventually this is likely to transition to vaccination requirements," said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA's Director General and CEO.
In either case, a secure system to manage COVID-19 testing or vaccination information is critical. "The IATA travel pass is a solution that both travellers and governments can trust. And it is being built with data security, convenience and verification as top priorities," he said.
IATA research amid the COVID-19 crisis in September showed that contactless processes will be popular with travellers as 70 per cent of passengers had concerns about handing over their passport, phone or boarding pass to airline agents, security staff or government officials at the airport.Nearly 85 per cent of travellers said that touchless processing throughout the airport will make them feel safer, and already 44 per cent of travellers said that they are willing to share personal data to enable touchless process, up significantly from 30 per cent in June.
IATA is developing the IATA travel pass in four independent modules that can interact with each other. These modules will cover registries for regulatory entry requirements and labs or test centres, verified certificate issuance, digital identity and the possibility for passengers to share their tests results along their journey via their mobile device.
Open standards enable the modules to be used as one solution or to complement capabilities being developed by other solutions providers.
The IATA travel pass is scheduled for release early in the first quarter of 2021 for Android and for iPhone.
( With inputs from ANI )
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