IATA to Release Travel Health Pass in First Quarter of 2021

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) recently unveiled key design elements of its Travel Pass, a mobile app to help travelers easily and securely manage their travel in line with any government requirements for coronavirus (Covid-19) testing or vaccine information.

The IATA Travel Pass is scheduled for release early in the first quarter of 2021 for Android and for iPhone.

The travel pass is a digital health pass designed to support the safe reopening of borders in the Covid-19 era.

“The IATA Travel Pass is a solution that both travelers and governments can trust,” said IATA Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac, underlining that it is being built with data security, convenience and verification as top priorities

According to IATA, the following three critical design elements emphasize those priorities:

– Putting travelers in control of their personal information for top-level data security and data privacy, as, technically, the app is being built in accordance with Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) principles (a term used to describe the digital movement that recognizes an individual should own and control their identity without the intervening administrative authorities).

– Global standards recognized by governments to ensure verified identity and test/vaccine information.

– Convenience and biosafety will be enhanced with integration into contactless travel processes.

IATA reminds that the industry has been developing contactless travel processes as part of a One ID transformation program for several years.

The IATA Travel Pass digital identity management module uses the well-developed principles of One ID (which are, in turn, based on International Civil Aviation Organization-ICAO standards). For the passenger, this means that the IATA Travel Pass will also unlock the potential for convenient contactless travel processes from check-in to boarding.

“As such, while the need for Covid-19 information verification may eventually disappear when we overcome the pandemic, IATA Travel Pass, however, will remain as a bold step forward in the implementation of contactless travel,” the association says.

Passengers want contactless travel

IATA research amid the Covis-19 crisis (September 2020) showed that contactless processes will be popular with travelers, as:

– 70 percent of passengers had concerns about handing over their passport, phone or boarding pass to airline agents, security staff or government officials at the airport
– 85 percent of travelers said that touchless processing throughout the airport would make them feel safer, and
– already 44 percent of travelers said that they are willing to share personal data to enable touchless process, up significantly from 30 percent in June.

When released, the IATA Travel Pass will use the “Secure Enclave” features of Apple devices for iPhone and a similar security encryption technology for Android.