Air New Zealand to Trial IATA's Digital Travel Pass on AKL - SYD in April

Air New Zealand has confirmed that it will trial IATA's digital Travel Pass app on its Auckland-Sydney route in April.

The trial will run for three weeks once the app hits app/android store shelves in April, and both aircrew and customers will be invited to join the trial.

"Once borders reopen, travel is going to look very different, with customers' health data needing to be verified at check-in," said Air New Zealand Chief Digital Officer, Jennifer Sepull. "It's essentially like having a digital health certificate that can be easily and securely shared with airlines. This will give customers peace of mind that they meet all travel requirements for the different countries around the world before they even get to the airport."

Customers will be able to create a digital health wallet linked to their e-passport. Once travellers have been tested and/or vaccinated, labs will securely send data to the individual's app which then checks requirements for travel against the data and customers who meet those travel requirements will be given the green tick to travel.

IATA's Senior Vice President Airport, Passenger, Cargo and Security, Nick Careen, said, "Air New Zealand's trial of IATA Travel Pass will help give governments the confidence to re-open borders and passengers the confidence to travel. The app has been developed with the highest levels of data privacy and security, so passengers always remain in control of their COVID19 health information. And governments can be confident that passengers who are "Ok to Travel" are in full compliance of COVID19 travel requirements."

Singapore Airlines became the first airline in the to trial IATA's Travel Pass in January. Since then, Emirates, Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways, Copa Airlines, and now Air New Zealand have all confirmed plans to test the initiative.

The initiative, which in many aspects is still very much under development, builds on IATA's Timatic solutions which airlines already use to verify passenger travel document requirements for their destination and any transit points. The personalized information Timatic delivers includes the passenger's destination, transit points, nationality, travel document, residence country etc. IATA Travel Pass is currently scheduled to go live in March.

IATA Travel Pass - Exclusive Video Interview with Vinoop Goel

PODCAST

Editor's note: As the above video interview was conducted over the internet, I would like to apologise that the audio and visual quality are not up to the same HD/UHD quality that it normally would be. Hopefully it won't be too long until we are once again conducting exclusive video interviews in person, but for now we have to make do with what we have. Thank you.

See also: Future of Airline Distribution and NDC - Interview with Yanik Hoyles, IATA (November 2019).

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