IATA: Beware of Border Chaos over Vaccine Passports

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has warned of potential airport chaos unless governments move quickly to adopt digital processes to manage travel health credentials.

The trade group said, pre-Covid-19, passengers, on average, spent about 1.5 hours in travel processes for every journey -including check-in, security, border control, customs and baggage claim.

Current data indicates that airport processing times have ballooned to three hours during peak times, with travel volumes at only about a third of pre-Covid-19 levels.

The greatest increases are at check-in and border control (emigration and immigration) where travel health credentials are being checked mainly as paper documents.

Modelling suggests that, without process improvements, the time spent in airport processes could reach 5.5 hours per trip at 75 percent pre-Covid-19 traffic levels, and eight hours per trip at 100 percent pre-Covid-19 traffic levels.

Over the past two decades, air travel has been reinvented to put passengers in control of their journeys through self-service processes. This enables travellers to arrive at the airport essentially “ready to fly”. And with digital identity technology, border control processes are also increasingly self-service using e-gates.

Paper-based Covid-19 document check would force travelers back to manual check-in and border control processes that are already struggling even with low volumes. If governments require Covid-19 health credentials for travel, integrating them into already automated processes is the solution for a smooth restart, IATA said. This would need globally recognised, standardised, and interoperable digital certificates for Covid-19 testing and vaccine certificates.