Making travel hassle-free and paperless entries, Delhi’s International Airport and Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport embark on the path of digitalism. On the 75th Independence Day, the airports launched the beta version of the DigiYatra (DY) app. This app helps domestic flyers fly from two locations with the help of an e-gate boarding system. So, reducing the hours of paperwork.
The app helps in making the process of boarding and e-gates swifter and is available to all domestic airlines in a phased manner. The biometric face verification helps the passengers with checking in, passing through security checks and boarding flights. It will also help in proving their identity and their boarding pass.
As per the DigiYatra foundation, the DigiYatra Central Ecosystem (DYCE) is built on World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards and also includes Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) with Verifiable Credentials (VCs) and Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs). With the help of these measures, the breaching of privacy issues and the use of sensitive data will be prevented. According to the foundation, the data collected about the passengers will be deleted 24 hours after they travel.
DigiYatra is currently available for passengers who are travelling via Vistara Airlines and Air Asia. For Android users, the app can be downloaded from the Google Play store. An iOS version of the app is expected to be available soon.
The DY Central Ecosystem (DYCE) is an initiative of the Digi Yatra Foundation (DYF) which launched a joint venture in 2019. The DYF will soon become a pan-India entity and look after the passenger ID validation process. DY is also certified as a biometric-enabled seamless travel (BEST) experience. It is based on the experience of facial recognition systems (FRS), which helps in providing a paperless travel experience to passengers. Delhi is one of the first few airports to have launched this system in the country. According to reports, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) has installed the facility at T3 and has conducted trials with almost 20,000 passengers.
