Union Minister for Civil Aviation Shri Jyotiraditya Scindia Launches Digi Yatra for Three Airports in The Country

Digi Yatra to Achieve Contactless, Seamless Processing of Passengers at Airports Based on Facial Recognition Technology

Union Minister for Civil Aviation Shri Jyotiraditya Scindia today launched Digi Yatra from the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi for three airports in the country, namely New Delhi, Varanasi and Bengaluru. Digi Yatra is conceived to achieve contactless, seamless processing of passengers at airports based on Facial Recognition Technology (FRT).

Speaking about the Digi Yatra project conceived by the Digi Yatra Foundation under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Minister said that the project envisages a traveller today pass through various checkpoints at the airports through paperless and contactless processing using facial features to establish her identity which could be linked to the boarding pass. To use this facility, one-time registration on the Digi Yatra app is required using Aadhar-based validation and a self-image capture. The project has tremendous advantages of improving passenger convenience and ease of travel.

About the privacy features of the project, the Minister said that keeping in mind privacy, there is no central storage of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).  The passenger’s ID and travel credentials are stored in a secure wallet on the passenger’s smartphone itself. The uploaded data will utilise blockchain technology and all the data will be purged from the servers within 24 hours of use.

With Digi Yatra, India will now stand in the ranks of world-class airports like Heathrow in London and Atlanta in the United States of America. Elucidating on the benefits of DigiYatra, the Minister stated the example of Dubai Airport where passenger time of upto 40 per cent was saved due to this technology. A similar technology saved nine minutes per aircraft time at the Atlanta Airport. The Minister also said that compared to other ports of call, the Indian system has been made far more seamless from entry to exit and therefore will be one of the most efficient systems in the world.

Digi Yatra in the first phase will be launched at 7 airports. However, it has been initially launched at 3 airports i.e., Delhi, Bengaluru and Varanasi today, to be followed by 4 airports namely Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, and Vijayawada by March 2023. Later it would be implemented across various airports in the country. The service is presently being launched for domestic flight passengers only. DigiYatra App is available on both IoS and Android. It is voluntary in nature.

With Digi Yatra, India is setting a new global benchmark for a seamless, hassle-free and health-risk-free process at airports.

Disclaimer: This is an official press release by PIB.