Dubai: IATA’s ‘Travel Pass’ digital health platform will have more features in the coming weeks.
“Some of those include minors and being able to deal with that, (and) different types of ID documents beyond the simple use of a passport,” said Nick Careen, SVP of Operations, Safety and Security for IATA.
“Lots of work being done, lots of accomplishments at this point - that was where it should be at the moment and more to come as we move forward,” said Careen, speaking during a media briefing.
The Travel Pass initiative allows passengers to have a digital passport verified with all their pre-travel test or vaccination details to meet the requirements at the end destination. They are also able to share test and vaccination certificates with authorities and airlines to facilitate smoother processing at airports.
“In terms of penetration, it's actually in excess of 170 routes at the moment - we're on every continent,” said Careen. “And we have 70 or 74 airlines that are trialing it at various stages… we see a number of airlines looking to increase the usage of this and to continue to learn from it.”
Qatar Airways trial
IATA is currently running a trial with Qatar Airways to utilize QR code from vaccinations in the Gulf country.
“We are running a trial right now with Qatar Airways to utilize QR code from vaccinations in that country to be able to be utilize (it) in the travel pass to test the functionality,” said Careen.
“A lot of our work has been focused on the testing capacity because we believed that testing would have been a way forward to achieve more travel…now we've put our focus on vaccinations as well,” said Careen.
