Chaotic airport experience with Covid checks

The airport experience risks becoming severely chaotic if governments don’t act swiftly to adopt digital processes to manage travel health credentials, as warned by the  International Air Transport Association.

Pre-COVID-19, passengers spent an average of about 1.5 hours in travel processes – including check-in, security, border control, customs and baggage claim – for each trip. According to IATA, current data indicates that airport processing times have ballooned to three hours during peak time with travel volumes at only about 30% of pre-COVID levels.

Processing times take longest at check-in and border control, where travel health credentials are being checked primarily as paper documents.

Without process improvements, the time spent in airport processes could reach 5.5 hours per trip at 75% pre-COVID traffic levels and a staggering eight hours per trip at 100% pre-COVID traffic levels.

Without an automated solution for COVID-19 checks, we can see the potential for significant airport disruptions on the horizon. Already, average passenger processing and waiting times have doubled from what they were pre-crisis during peak time – reaching an unacceptable three hours. And that is with many airports deploying pre-crisis level staffing for a small fraction of pre-crisis volumes, says IATA director general Willie Walsh.

Nobody will tolerate waiting hours at check-in or for border formalities. We must automate the checking of vaccine and test certificates before traffic ramps up. The technical solutions exist. But governments must agree digital certificate standards and align processes to accept them. And they must act fast.”

One solution for governments that require health credentials for travel is to integrate those credentials into already automated processes. However, doing so requires globally recognized, standardized, and interoperable digital certificates for COVID-19 testing and vaccine certificates.

But digitizing certificates has several advantages: avoiding fraudulent documentation, enabling advance “ready-to-fly” checks by governments, reducing waiting times in airports through integration with self-service check-in, increasing security through integration with digital identity management, and reducing the risk of virus transmission