DIGIYATRA TO EASE TRAVEL PROCESS FOR AIR TRAVELLERS

NEW DELHI: For seamless experience of air travellers, the ministry of civil aviation has proposed a joint venture between private airport operators and Airports Authority of India (AAI) for implementing Digiyatra.

The digiyatra platform will help passengers to plan their trips efficiently by identifying price trends and estimate future airfares at the time of booking. Passengers will have the option to link their Aadhaar to airlines at the time of booking for faster airport entry and automated check-inns.

The ministry is also trying to get in-principal approval from UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) to grant AUA (authentication user agency) to this yet to be formed company so that passengers can authenticate using Aadhaar.

The ministry has however, clarified that Aadhaar will not be mandatory and passengers can generate Digiyatra id using other identification method as well. “MOCA will forward a proposal to UIDAI for in principal approval to grant AUA status to a company being formed by airport operators in which AAI will hold a minor stake. A common digiyatra id platform will be built that offers the core services for enrollment, authentication, consented profile sharing etc. Getting a digiyatra id will be completely voluntary and the choice of government id whether Aadhaar, pan, passport, driving license or student id will also be voluntary,” said a civil aviation ministry official.

According to the officer, part of the technical committee formed for digiyatra, there will be Digiyatra authentication kiosks at the airport and passenger’s face will be his ticket and boarding pass. The ministry is targeting January 1 as the launch date.

“There will be no storage of Aadhaar number of any passenger and technical committee will prepare RFP and will select vendor for development, operations and maintenance of the digiyatra platform,” the officer added.