Crown crisis: digital travel pass should fix it

The airline association IATA wants to boost air traffic after the devastating thefts caused by the corona pandemic with a digital passport. In addition to passport data, proof of corona or vaccination certificates must also be stored and presented at the airport, as IATA head Alexandre de Juniac said in Geneva.

The association wants to make quarantine obligations in arrival countries superfluous, which have so far largely paralyzed the resumption of air traffic. The goal is for passengers not to have to touch anything during check-in, passport and customs control, said IATA security chief Nick Careen. Documents or papers should no longer have to be passed back and forth between travelers and inspectors to avoid possible contamination.

The association itself has developed a smartphone app that will be tested with British Airways, among others, over the next few weeks. It should be available for the first three months of next year. In addition to passport data, laboratory results from corona tests and vaccination certificates must also be kept and verified at the airport.

The application is available to all airlines, including those that are not members of the association. Careen said the association is confident that governments will accept this digital passport. The technologies used are already being used by many authorities.

Instead of 4.5 billion people the year before, only 1.8 billion people were traveling by air in 2020. According to IATA estimates, airlines lost USD 118.5 billion (almost CHF 105 billion). (pbe / SDA)