MAY, 2021
As vaccination drive continues, airports are set to reopen in the coming months across the globe. The stay-at-home orders will eventually recede, but getting where you need or want to be is set to change dramatically.
Airlines are still cutting flights for the foreseeable future. It’s unsure how soon networks and frequency will be restored, but somber prognosis speculates the distant 2024 as a year of full commercial aviation recovery.
Looking back, before the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic, millions of people daily were taken onboard of commercial airlines to fulfill their business commitments, visits their families, or going on long-awaited vacations.
In 2021, as we glance in the near future, expectations rise on the hope of virus being controlled, people taking off the masks and start having traveling experience as normal. But the concern of getting sick when you travel is likely to remain in mind of the global travelers for a while longer. Social distancing and smaller groups of people, or individual travel will be paramount, as more and more people would consider flying by private charter.
Meantime, private travelers are seeking for safety assurance, as an added value to a privilege of charter flight. A sort of golden ticket to any destination, a guard, one solid resolution to a wide range of restrictions that travelers have experienced during the pandemic is well awaited.
The possibility of having digital document to prove that traveler is eligible to fly and, in the same time, entirely protected against Covid-19 was met positively among business travelers. A digital travel pass meant to ease the restrictions and give a way through the post pandemic travel recovery.
Global airline industry organisation – IATA has launched a pilot version of the COVID-19 travel pass earlier this year. The digital system that combines COVID test results and vaccine certificates aims to help facilitate international travel and lay a path to a normal future.
The IATA has designed a digital health pass that will support safe reopening of borders. Accordingly to the IATA source, this mobile app encompasses information required by many authorities. The pass enables authorized labs and test centers to securely share test and vaccination certificates with passengers. Passengers can then create a digital passport and share testing or vaccination certificates with airlines and authorities to facilitate travel. In effect, the Travel Pass contains required information to verify if a passenger is eligible to undertake their travel journey.
In the GCC region, IATA has recently partnered with Etihad Airways, Emirates and Qatar Airways to make provisional tests ahead of possible implementation of this technology for the airlines’ passengers.
Etihad offered guests the pass on selected flights from Abu Dhabi in the first quarter of 2021. Emirates launched the pass for customers travelling on select destinations from Dubai in April. While Qatar Airways has begun trials of the app on its Doha-Istanbul route.
Air New Zealand, Rwanda, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Air Baltic, Virgin and Hong Kong Airlines said to put IATA Travel Pass on trial on selected routes.
While many airlines conducting Travel pass testing, it is not considered as an exclusive asset of the commercial aviation. The travel pass is expected to be rather an airport facility, an enhancement to the air operations as whole, in the particular airport. It meant to improve the travel experience for any traveler, including business aviators.
Because the travel pass is required to facilitate advanced trip requirements, such as COVID testing and vaccination card uploaded together with the traveler’s documents, in combination to the private jet flight, that can take you to the destinations not flown by commercial airlines, it is seen as an ultimate golden ticket to any destination in the post pandemic world.
With expectations on the IATA travel pass roll out soon, all the private jet travelers are looking to have even more smooth and safe trips ahead.