Aer Lingus has confirmed to ITTN that it will begin trialling the IATA Travel Pass “in the coming weeks.” Fellow IAG Group member British Airways began trials of the digital health app yesterday, 1 June.
Aer Lingus has not announced the date trials will start or on what routes, but tests run by other airlines have all been on a voluntary basis.
What is Travel Pass
Travel Pass is a mobile app that will allow travellers to store and manager their Covid-19 test results or vaccines, and by storing them all in the one digital place it allows for greater efficiency and safety.
The Travel Pass includes a contactless identity app IATA was developing before the pandemic with digital identity solutions company, Evernym, which has worked to develop identity tests that can be easily and quickly verified through a digital watermark.
“The whole purpose behind this is a passenger can walk from curbside to plane without having to physically exchange documents,” said Dubliner Alan Murray Hayden, IATA’s head of airport, passenger and security products – and one of the developers of the app.
The Travel Pass is a technology exclusively for airline use; Hayden believes that participating airlines will be able to incorporate its technology into their own apps, so that a passenger’s health status can be kept in the same location as their boarding pass, thereby avoiding the need for two separate apps.
The Travel Pass is similar to the soon-to-be-launched EU Covid Certificate, which will show a traveller’s digital health status, but the latter is not limited to plane travel.
