The End of Boarding Passes and Check-Ins? A New Era of Air Travel Approaches

Will boarding passes and airport check-ins soon become a thing of the past? With a major travel overhaul on the horizon, this could soon become reality. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN agency that shapes global aviation policy, is preparing to roll out “digital travel credentials” for travelers.

This will let passengers store all their travel information on their mobile device. According to Times, this could become reality in the next three years. 

No More Boarding Passes and Check-In?

Airline passengers currently need to check-in online or upon arriving at the airport. Afterward, they receive their boarding passes, which include a barcode that will be scanned at the gate before boarding.

With this upgrade, flyers will download a “journey pass” that will automatically update if there are changes on their flights. This will also allow passengers to upload their passports and integrate facial recognition. This would replace the manual check-in process that alerts airlines when passengers arrive at the airport. Instead, passengers will have their face scanned for verification. 

Valérie Viale, the director of product management at Amadeus, a travel tech firm, believes that this shake up is “the biggest in 50 years”. She added that, “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.”

But of course, upgrades to airport infrastructure are needed to make this a reality. Viale said, “Many airline systems haven’t changed for more than 50 years because everything has to be consistent across the industry and interoperable.”

Privacy Concerns

These changes could raise privacy concerns among passengers. However, according to Amadeus, it has developed a system that automatically erases data within 15 seconds of interacting with a “touchpoint”.

In addition to check-ins and boarding passes, this technology will also change how passengers deal with delays and connecting flights. If passengers miss their connecting flights because of delays that are beyond their control, they’d automatically get a notification with details of their new flight.