Latvian airline airBaltic is among the first airlines in the world to express its support for introduction of global International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Travel Pass solution for cross border travel. The IATA Travel Pass is a mobile app that will help passengers to manage their travel easily and securely in line with government requirements for COVID-19 tests or vaccines.

airBaltic has announced it will trial the IATA Travel Pass – a mobile travel and vaccination document solution on flights between Riga–Amsterdam and Riga–Oslo. The trial will run for three weeks and airBaltic customers on these routes will be invited to join the trial.

Martin Gauss, Chief Executive Officer of airBaltic: “Travelling today has become increasingly complex for the passengers. We appreciate IATA for introducing a global solution that is capable of helping to make the voyage smoother, while increasing reliability of the testing certification passengers often need to present to boarding agents.”

Tālis Linkaits, Minister of Transport of the Republic of Latvia: “IATA Travel Pass would enable airBaltic to introduce a simple and safe solution that will help both governments in verifying authenticity of test results as well as laboratories to issue certificates that will be recognized. Notably, it would help to decrease the complexity of travel significantly.”

“Testing is the immediate solution to safely re-open borders and re-connect people. And eventually this is likely to transition to vaccination requirements. In either case, a secure system to manage COVID-19 testing or vaccination information is critical. The IATA Travel Pass is a solution that both travellers and governments can trust. And it is being built with data security, convenience and verification as top priorities.  We are proud to work with airBaltic and the Latvian government to introduce IATA Travel Pass. This is an important step in enabling international travel during the pandemic, giving travellers the confidence that they are meeting all COVID-19 entry requirements,” said Rafael Schvartzman, IATA’s Regional Vice President for Europe.

IATA Travel Pass is based on the passenger’s digital identity. It has been developed as four independent modules that can interact with each other. These modules cover registries for regulatory entry requirements and labs/test centres, verified testing/ vaccination certificate issuance and the possibility for passengers to share their tests results along their journey with involved authorities via their mobile device. These modules can work together as one complete end-to-end solution. Or they can be used separately to complement systems that others are building. IATA has developed these modules to ensure they are interoperable with other industry solutions as well as sustainable in the long-term. 

The safety and health of our passengers is airBaltic’s top priority. airBaltic has introduced strong health measures and the flight operations follow the recommendations issued by authorities. To read more about the airBaltic health measures, please visit airBaltic website: https://www.airbaltic.com/en/health-measures.