IATA unveils details of Travel Pass

The International Air Transport Association’s Travel Pass is a mobile app to help travellers easily and securely manage their travel in line with any government requirements for COVID-19 testing or vaccination. Ian Youngman looks at the recently unveiled key design elements.

Testing is the immediate solution to safely re-open borders and re-connect people, and eventually this is likely to transition to vaccination requirements. In either case, a secure system to manage COVID-19 testing or vaccination information could be useful.

IATA claims that their Travel Pass will be a solution that both travellers and governments can trust, and it is being built with data security, convenience and verification as top priorities.

The Travel Pass is scheduled for release early in the first quarter of 2021 for Android and for iPhone. For iPhone it will use the Secure Enclave features of Apple devices and a similar security encryption technology for Android.

IATA has emphasised these critical design elements:

Putting travellers in control of their personal information

The pass stores encrypted data including verified test or vaccination results on the mobile device. The traveller controls what information is shared from their phone with airlines and authorities. No central database or data repository is storing the information. By keeping travellers 100% in control of their information, IATA states that the highest standards for data privacy are ensured.

Global standards recognised by governments

A government-issued ePassport is used to verify the identity of the user. It also serves to create a digital representation of the user’s passport to allow the information to be sent electronically in a secured way that is linked to their verified identity. Key to this are global standards developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which match biometric passport data and a selfie taken by the user. This creates a Type 1 digital travel credential (a verified digital identify) in line with ICAO standards.

Until a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available to the general public, the priority is on COVID-19 testing. Laboratories have well-established safety standards for managing and verifying test results to individuals. IATA is partnering with selected and established laboratories to securely link their test results with the verified identity of the IATA Travel Pass holder.

Integration into contactless travel processes

The ICAO CART recommendations for biosafety include the use of contactless travel processes to reduce the risk of virus transmission when documents need to be exchanged in the travel process.

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 principles of One ID.

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 will remain as a step forward in the implementation of contactless travel.

IATA research shows that contactless processes will be popular with travellers:

• 70% 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% said that touchless processing throughout the airport would make them feel safer.
  44% are willing to share personal data to enable touchless process.

IATA is developing the IATA Travel Pass in four independent modules that can interact with each other. These modules will cover registries for regulatory entry requirements and labs/test centres, verified certificate issuance, digital identity and the possibility for passengers to share their tests results along their journey via their mobile device. Open standards enable the modules to be used as one solution or to complement capabilities being developed by other solutions providers.

IATA has outlined the steps for travellers to create an E-Passport on their soon to be released app, using facial recognition features to match biometrics data contained in passport chips.

The eventual rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine has pushed many organisations within the travel industry to develop frameworks for a verification process. The World Health Organisation plans a digital vaccine certificate, while American Airlines is trialling a digital health pass.