Have you ever felt temporary anxiety or a panic attack when you are trying to search for your travel pass, just when the announcement to board your airplane blares at the airport?
Looks like you don’t have to experience that feeling anymore because the future of air travel is at hand. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), responsible for developing and upholding laws for global airlines, announces that digital travel credentials are underway.
This means all a passenger’s passport information can now be available through our devices for easy storage and access, especially during travel time. Currently, passengers can check in online or when they arrive at the airport, giving them their boarding pass bearing a barcode. Passengers can then have the barcode scanned at different checkpoints throughout the airport, such as before boarding the aircraft.
Those will be in the past as ICAO proposed the so-called “journey pass,” a downloadable feature on mobile phones that allows travelers to track changes in their booking details occasionally. Furthermore, passengers can now upload their passports through the application, allowing airlines to keep close track of the passengers boarding their planes.
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According to Valerie Viale, the director of product management at Amadeus (a travel technology company), this was a significant move since the introduction of the e-ticketing system in the early 2000s.
While the Times projected the implementation of a more digitalized way of travel preparations to take effect within three years, airports must be ready to accommodate these improvements by providing facial recognition technology and the capability of mobile devices to read passports.
Meanwhile, Amadeus has addressed privacy concerns and the possibility of stealing passenger information. The company developed a feature where the passengers’ details are deleted just 15 seconds after scanning their passports or boarding passes at checkpoints.
Finally, such an advancement could also greatly assist passengers who miss their flights, for example, due to emergency cases. Their journey pass app would simply update them of their new flight details moving forward, and they could hop on the schedule given to them.
Technology has already touched various travel requirements, particularly since the pandemic happened, and it has indeed made our travels faster and hassle-free. With the coming of the journey pass in the future, it opens new opportunities to ensure even more convenient ways of going to places.
What do you think of the journey pass idea? Let us know your opinions.