Will Future Air Travel Not Require Boarding Pass, Check-In? New Rules For Airports Explained

The days of standing in long check-in queues for a flight or frantically looking for your boarding pass will be over soon as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) plans to overhaul the aviation policies by introducing “digital travel credentials”.

This means that air travellers will have to simply upload their passports or travel document to their phones and pass through airports using only their face for verification.

The changes could come into effect within three years, according to the Times.

What Is A Digital Journey Pass?

Currently, air travellers must check in either online or at the airport upon arrival. They are then issued with a boarding pass with a barcode. This is scanned by a passenger at various points throughout the airport, including at the gate before boarding.

But with the new standards, boarding passes and the need to check in for flights will become redundant. Instead, flyers will download a “journey pass” to their phone when they book a flight. The pass will be automatically updated if any changes are made to the booking.

The journey pass will contain all the booking details and biometric passport details. Passengers will not have to take their phone or passport out of their pockets as their face will open the boarding gate.

As per the report, passengers with luggage will drop them at bag drop and those with just hand baggage will be first scanned at the pre-security gates, which allows passengers access to the airport’s central search area.

Valérie Viale, the director of product management at Amadeus, a travel technology company, told the Times that the changes were “the biggest in 50 years”. She said: “The last upgrade of great scale was the adoption of e-ticketing in the early 2000s. The industry has now decided it’s time to upgrade to modern systems that are more like what Amazon would use.”

What Could Be The Challenges?

The new technology could spark privacy concerns. But Amadeus said it had developed a system where passengers’ details are wiped within 15 seconds of each contact with a “touchpoint” – such as the pre-security gates, as reported by Guardian.

Regarding delays and connecting flights, the new technology would automatically send a notification to the passengers who have missed their connecting flights due to delays on their phones with details of their new onward flight. Their journey pass would automatically update and they would be allowed to board the new flight.

It should be noted that the airline industry will need to overcome challenges related to interoperability between different airline systems. Currently, many airline systems are siloed, with reservation systems only interacting with delivery systems once check-in opens.

Viale points out that the future system will be more continuous, with the journey pass evolving dynamically as passengers move through the airport.

India’s Air Traffic Set To Soar

New government figures predict air passenger traffic will increase by 80% over the next five years, from 222 million passenger journeys in 2023-24 to nearly 400 million by 2028-29.

Over the five years, the size of the commercial-aircraft fleet is likely to increase from 813 to 1,300. This means the overall airport handling capacity is expected to increase from 550 million passengers per annum to 800 million, stretching logistical capacity immensely in a short period of time.

These projections suggest the rapid recovery and continuing expansion of India’s aviation market since the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

By the end of 2023, air travel worldwide had returned to 94.1% of pre-Covid pandemic levels, with international travel up 41.6% in 2022, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

In India, Maharashtra will be among the states that will witness an increase in aircraft movements in the coming years. Aurangabad, Kolhapur and Pune airports are anticipated to cumulatively manage almost 130,000 aircraft movements a year by 2029, as per a report by the India Today.

The Navi Mumbai International Airport is one of the most watched aviation infrastructure projects, and is being developed by the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO).