Say goodbye to the chaos of digging through your bag for a boarding pass or racing to check in on the way to the airport. Air travel might soon get a major tech makeover.
The folks over at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) — basically the UN’s air travel brains — are cooking up a new plan that could totally change how we fly. Their big idea? A slick little thing called a “digital travel credential”.
This would let travellers save their passport details on their phones, making things way smoother. We might see all this rolled out soon.
Right now, the routine is pretty familiar: you check in online or at the terminal, get a barcode-laden boarding pass, and keep flashing it at every checkpoint until you’re finally on the plane.
But with this new system, you wouldn’t need to check in or carry a boarding pass at all. Instead, when you book a flight, you'd get a “journey pass” sent straight to your phone — kind of like a digital boarding pass that updates automatically if your flight changes.
On top of that, travellers could upload their passports to their devices and breeze through the airport just by showing their face. No more check-in counters or kiosks — airlines would get pinged when your face shows up at the terminal.
A product management head at the travel tech company Amadeus called it the biggest air travel transformation in decades. She pointed out that the last major shift was e-tickets back in the early 2000s — now it’s time for something a bit more 2025.
To make all this work, airports would need to upgrade their systems — things like facial recognition tech and tools to scan digital passports.
She explained that one reason things have moved slowly is because airline tech has to work the same way across the world — and it hasn’t seen major changes in half a century.
Naturally, privacy might be a concern, but Amadeus says their system deletes personal data within 15 seconds of each airport checkpoint interaction. So, no, your face won’t be stored forever.
And here’s another cool feature: if your flight gets delayed and you miss your connection, your phone could automatically get the new flight info. No more mad dashes to the help desk. The journey pass would just refresh with your new details, and you could walk right onto the next plane.
Airline systems today work in disconnected pieces — one part handles bookings, another kicks in at check-in. But with this upgrade, everything would be seamless, and your digital pass would update live throughout your trip.
