With consistency and interoperability of digital health passports proving challenging, many travel suppliers looked to IATA to provide a global standard. IATA have now delivered a solution in the form of the IATA Travel Pass.
Created in collaboration with an advisory group of airlines, IATA Travel Pass is a mobile app that aims to support a safe and straight-forward experience for travellers. The app gives travellers access to the local health requirements and testing/vaccination centres for their departure and destination locations, as well as enabling them to securely share testing results and vaccination certificates with airlines and government authorities.
1. A global registry of health requirements that enables passengers to find accurate information on travel, testing and vaccine requirements. (This gathers information from 1,700 government health authorities and is updated over 200 times per day.)
2. A global registry of testing/vaccination centres that enables passengers to find testing at their departure location which meets the standards or requirements for their destination.
3. A lab app that enables authorised labs and test centres to communicate certification to travellers securely.
4. A contactless travel app that enables passengers to create a digital passport, verify that their test/vaccine meets regulations and share certifications with relevant authorities.
In order to meet security and privacy concerns, all data is stored on a traveller’s device and remains under the control of the traveller to comply with data protection laws.
In practice the IATA Travel Pass checks a travellers itinerary for testing and vaccination requirements, relevant timings and for nearby authorised labs to provide a set of criteria for the passenger. Once this criteria is met then a passenger is marked as safe to travel.
The IATA Travel Pass is now available for download for Apple users and was recently trialled by Singapore Airlines. Updated releases that feature more advanced capabilities are expected in the coming months.