While the main application for the International Airport Transport Association’s (IATA) digital travel pass will be to verify passengers’ health status, it could also speed up check-ins for flights at airports, said Singapore Airlines IT SVP, George Wang.
“I think digital health pass is one way to help make travel seamless for customers,” Wang said during Salesforce’s virtual Dreamforce conference.
“At the same time, to help operation be very efficient — so that when you’re using digital health pass for check-in, for example — our backend system has already marked all these things that you don’t really need to go to the airport for, [such as] queuing at the counter, which would increase the risk.
“Digital health pass is just not an app; it needs to be more than just an app that a customer can see because it needs to integrate with your backend operation.”
In March, Singapore Airline announced it was going to pilot the IATA’s travel pass mobile application, starting with passengers from Singapore to London.
The pass has been designed to enable authorized labs and test centres to share COVID-19 test vaccination certificates that will be used to verify they have met appropriate travel requirements, which could then be shared with airlines and authorities. Other airlines that are looking into integrating the IATA app into their systems include Qantas and Air New Zealand.
In a bid to further simplify the flying experience for passengers, Wang highlighted how the airline also recently introduced its KrisShop e-commerce platform to its inflight entertainment system.
Singapore Airlines said it worked with Thales, Panasonic Avionics, and AirFree to connect the two systems together, which enables live updates on product availability and credit card authorization. Passengers are able to purchase from 4,000 products and organize for delivery to their home, hotel, or the seat of their next connecting flight, according to Wang.
The service has been initially rolled out on selected Airbus A350 aircraft, and will be progressively rolled out across the Singapore Airlines network.
