Qatar Airways is aiming to be the first airline in the Middle East to put on trial the innovative new IATA Travel Pass ‘Digital Passport’ mobile app, in partnership with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), from March 2021.
The trial will play an important role in the airline’s vision to have a more contactless, secure and seamless travel experience for its passengers.
The first phase of trials of the Digital Passport will be rolled out on the airline’s Doha to Istanbul route, enabling passengers to receive their COVID-19 test results and to verify that they are eligible to undertake their journey. It will also allow travellers to safely and securely share their verified ‘OK to Travel’ status with the airline and other stakeholders, even before their arrival at the airport.
IATA Travel Pass will also provide up-to-date information on COVID-19 health regulations, helping travellers to ensure that they meet the latest government entry requirements of their destination country.
Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, HE Akbar Al Baker, said they are focused on ensuring that the carrier will become the first airline in the Middle East to put on trial the ground-breaking IATA Travel Pass technology. This is part of their commitment to safeguard the safety, health and well-being of passengers, and to ensure an integrated, seamless customer experience at every point of their journey.
The IATA Travel Pass effectively acts as a ‘digital passport’ for travellers and is the latest tool in the fight against the spread of COVID-19. This ‘tool’ will enable passengers to securely and effortlessly navigate their travel plans, safe in the knowledge that their verified travel credentials are based on the latest COVID-19 information, the strictest data privacy regulations and entry rules of their destination.
We hope that by investing in this technology we are able to further encourage passengers around the world to have greater confidence in the safety of air travel and begin making future travel plans over the coming months.
IATA Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac said that the IATA Travel Pass will verify testing or vaccination credentials of travellers, which is key to unlocking travel without quarantine measures. He added that the Qatar Airways trial will help build confidence among governments and travellers that the IATA Travel Pass can securely and conveniently link traveller identities with their digital travel credentials.
It will also help us prove that ICAO’s global standards for digital passports work. And it will highlight the need for governments to accelerate their work with industry to develop global standards for health certificates – a critical enabler to safely re-connecting the world.
Qatar Airways has become the first global airline in the world to achieve the prestigious Five-Star COVID-19 Airline Safety Rating by international air transport rating organisation, Skytrax. This follows the recent success of Hamad International Airport as the first airport in the Middle East and Asia to be awarded a Skytrax Five-Star COVID-19 Airport Safety Rating.
For updates and more information on Qatar Airways, visit qatarairways.com.
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