In the course of 2020, many of the world’s borders were closed, there were even countries that closed their borders between states and provinces, in order to protect the health of their citizens as it was threatened by the pandemic caused by COVID-19. However, this year 2021 began with good news, as the existence of the vaccine and the possible enabling of air connectivity for its distribution; thus making it possible to reach more places with the long-awaited vaccine, but that was at the beginning of the year 2021 because by now we have already witnessed a new border closure due to a recent outbreak of contagion in several cities around the world.
Technology support
Thanks to the good use of technology and the search for solutions, we have seen how all levels and economic sectors have been innovating and looking for alternatives so that the economic impact seen in the year 2020, due to the pandemic, is not repeated. That is why the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has developed an application that will serve as a digital health solution and which is thought to contribute greatly to the final reopening of airport borders and thus safely activate again, sanitarily, commercial flights.
IATA Travel Pass
The name given to the application developed by the International Air Transport Association is IATA Travel Pass and is an application for mobile devices in which it will be possible to carry the next health Passport to be used for travel. This application will provide more security and more efficiency to the airport processes that a common passenger must go through as they will be able to carry his COVID-19 vaccination certificate or the results of the COVID-19 test, linked to their identity digitally.
In this way, we can see that thanks to technology the contact and delivery of documents between a passenger and the airport authorities are reduced since to display and verify this information, it is only necessary to make a click on the application, or failing that, the official can access this information by scanning the QR code generated by the IATA Travel Pass.
Launch of IATA Travel Pass
IATA’s director of security, passengers, and airports, Alan Murray Hayden, informed that airlines will pay a fee to IATA per passenger for the use of the app, while for passengers the application will be completely free; he also informed that the IATA Travel Pass app will be available from the first quarter of 2021 for iOS mobile devices, while Android mobile device users will have to wait until the second quarter of the same year.
However, he mentioned that they will implement the IATA Travel Pass digital health solution in March on major commercial airlines, highlighting that Singapore Airlines is the first airline to test the system on flights from Yaktara and Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, as will British Airways; while on the American side, they expected Copa Airlines to be the first airline in America to test the IATA Travel Pass.
Do you have any opinion about this issue? Do you agree with this IATA initiative? Do you think this application is safe?
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