IATA is developing a health pass app that will enable passengers to create a digital version of their passport and collect and share Covid-19 testing data from laboratories with governments and airlines in an effort to facilitate the reopening of borders. Speaking as part of the airline body's Global Media Days event, IATA's head of airport, passenger and security products, Alan Murray Hayden, highlights that the driver behind the move is to "get passengers back into the sky". For that to take place, he says that "passengers, governments and airlines need to have confidence" in any testing regime, and "need to have verifiability". The app will enable passengers to receive Covid-19 results from laboratories, verify the outcome is sufficient to enter their intended destination, and share information with national authorities and airlines to enable boarding and customs clearances. IATA believes the system will benefit governments because it will enable them to verify the authenticity of tests and identify the person presenting those tests. Airlines will benefit from being able to provide information on test requirements and check that passengers have met those requirements. Laboratories will be able to issue digital results in a format that will be recognised by airlines and authorities, and travellers will receive accurate information and be able to convey test results to carriers and border authorities, IATA says. The digital passport aspect could eventually enable passengers to move through their entire travel journey using only contactless technology, it notes. IATA has been working with IAG to develop the pass and plans to launch a trial with the airline group by the end of the year, with a wider rollout scheduled for the first quarter of 2021 initially for iPhones, followed by an Android version. Murray Hayden says that although the charges involved with the app are yet to be finalised, there will be a per-passenger fee to airlines that is "as low as possible", with no extra expense for travellers or governments. He adds that governments have in general been "extremely open" to the idea, "because they see the benefit of it". He notes that there are similar such apps being developed by airline alliances, with IATA hoping that the app would work in combination with them. Eventually the association hopes that most of the technology will be able to function through airline's own apps. The travel pass will consist of four open source modules: a global registry of health requirements; a global registry of testing and vaccination centres; a lab app that enables testing centres to securely share test and vaccination certificates; and a contactless travel app to allow passengers to create their digital passport and receive and share test and vaccination certificates. “Today borders are double locked. Testing is the first key to enable international travel without quarantine measures. The second key is the global information infrastructure needed to securely manage, share and verify test data matched with traveller identities in compliance with border control requirements. That’s the job of IATA Travel Pass. We are bringing this to market in the coming months to also meet the needs of the various travel bubbles and public health corridors that are starting operation,” says IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac. The base for the global registry will be IATA's Timatic software, which is already used by most airlines to manage compliance with passport and visa regulations. The contactless travel app that will manage the test and vaccination certificates is based on IATA's One ID initiative.

Passengers arriving in England after 15 December from countries that are not on the UK's travel-corridor list will be able to reduce their quarantine time by almost a third if they test negative for Covid-19 five days after arrival. The UK government today unveiled its 'test to release for international travel' strategy, under which passengers can pre-book and pay for a test from a state-approved private provider, to be taken after five days of self-isolation. If the result is negative, they can immediately exit quarantine instead of completing the currently-required 14 days of self-isolation. The government says it has opted to test passengers after five days rather than on arrival at the airport because "it allows time for the virus, should it be present, to incubate, helping reduce the risk of a false negative result". Passengers can book a test before they travel from a provider listed on a government website. This must be stated on their passenger-locator form prior to arrival. They can then take the test "on or after" day five of their self-isolation period. The test can be taken at home or at the provider's testing site. If the result is negative, they can immediately come out of quarantine. Passengers from non-exempt countries who choose not to take a test must self-isolate for the full two weeks after arriving. "We have a plan in place to ensure that our route out of this pandemic is careful and balanced, allowing us to focus on what we can now do to bolster international travel while keeping the public safe," states UK transport minister Grant Shapps. "Our new testing strategy will allow us to travel more freely, see loved ones and drive international business." The UK government also announced today that it would provide financial support to airports and ground handlers in England. The scheme, which launches in early 2021, will provide up to £8 million ($10.6 million) per commercial airport to help cover fixed costs. "This new package of support for airports, alongside a new testing regime for international arrivals, will help the sector take off once again as we build back better from the pandemic," says UK chancellor Rishi Sunak. The government says it is also exploring pre-departure Covid-19 testing pilot programmes "with partner countries on a bilateral basis".

One of the risks for the airline industry when some kind of normality returns is states using the cover of public health to protect struggling carriers by restricting market access. For IATA’s vice-president for members and external relations, Sebastian Mikosz, that would be a nice problem to have, given where the industry is today. “That’s what we’d like to avoid,” Mikosz noted in an interview ahead of this year’s IATA AGM, which takes place on 24 November. “But to be honest, I would love to have this problem. It is one step after another. And we have a situation today where we have the winter long-haul traffic plan at 10% of pre-Covid levels in certain areas.” Mikosz, the former LOT Polish Airlines and Kenya Airways chief executive, took up the role at IATA in June. The wide-ranging mandate covers relations with IATA’s airline members, industry partners, governments and stakeholders. It encompasses issues like its networking events – IATA holds around 90 gatherings annually – as well as the ever-hot topic of tackling aviation’s impact on climate change. But, given he took up the role at the height of the crisis, the focus is clear. “At a personal level I am very happy to be here, even though this is not what we discussed when I was joining IATA,” he says. “We have taken a shift from a booming industry with a huge prospect of development, with a problem on congestion, with a problem of noise, a lack infrastructure, to one in just a few weeks, where the whole purpose for us as a trade organisation is to restart the industry. “It’s not a bump in the road, we have been put to a stop. You have statistics which are unbelievable because there are months when most of the statistics were minus 99%. The speed at which the crisis arrived and then also the scale. And there is not a single country or market who can say ’oh, we heard about it, but actually it’s business as usual’. “So our job really is one and only. It is to be able to restart the industry, which means to start being able to plan in a predictable way the building of networks. It’s not about planes, pilots or airports – it’s about passengers coming back and buying tickets with the knowledge they will be able to travel.”

MOVIING OUT OF QUARANTINES
Critical to tackling this in the near term is persuading states to move away from the damaging quarantine measures that have been implemented to mitigate the spread of Covid. The key to this lies in the use of testing. IATA had already worked as a member and promoter of ICAO’s Council Aviation Recovery Task Force (CART), which earlier this year set out common standards to mitigate the spread of the disease through air travel. It has now done likewise to make additional recommendations through CART to help states replace quarantine with testing. The aim is to give passengers certainty they can travel. ”That’s the only target we have now – all the other targets are secondary,” he says, noting a return of stable networks and passenger flows is the only way to move airlines out of their current financial predicament. “We cannot have a system whereby our members keep running to their governments asking for money, because this is not a sustainable business model.” Airlines and the industry are increasingly promoting trials of rapid testing, for example American Airlines, British Airways and United Airlines have in recent days detailed plans for pre-departure testing on some transatlantic routes. But quarantines remain in place. ”We have seen very different appetites for risk and a very different approach to the eagerness to open markets – or try solutions to open markets,” he adds. ”We observe that even inside the European Union. You could expect that within the EU it would be natural that countries could agree on measures, but you can observe a theory of totally independent decisions without co-ordination – and that’s really a big challenge.” But progress on the availability and speed of tests, combined with encouraging recent news around the efficiency of potential vaccines, provides some reason for optimism that the industry can push on. ”We have the ICAO recommendation to introduce testing as an alternative to quarantines, which for us means we can start pushing and advocating for step-by-step market reopening from December. From what I call a survival mode in 2020 we are optimistic we are going to start the recovery next year, because there will be maybe more appetite from governments.” But he cautions 2021 will still be a challenging year for airlines. “It’s going to be the most difficult year because everyone is going to say it’s done, when it’s not done. Financial relief may not be available to the extent it was in 2020. Cost will be there, but passengers will not be there.” That restart brings with it the challenge for states of balancing not only the health risk versus the economic benefits of opening up air travel markets, but also how to support their national carriers. That may make it tempting for some states to cap market access to competitors under the guise of tackling the health crisis. ”We are concerned that temporary measures [could] remain, which is why we will be strong advocating any temporary measure that was introduced is lifted – because we do not want to see the return of some form of protectionism through sanitary needs,” says Mikosz. ”The moment we are going to be able to fly back, I would love to switch my radar to where are the obvious political decisions hidden by sanitary decisions, where it’s obviously over-protectionism. For the moment I’m nowhere near that.”