Security concerns
The airlines believe that the health passes, in addition to facilitating a speedy journey through airports, will protect against vaccine and testing certificate fraud. Fake Covid-19 vaccination certificates and statements attesting to negative test results are already widely available for purchase on the internet, said Stuart Barwood, director of global airline strategy for the fraud prevention company Forter. Much of the problem, he added, is coming from paper vaccine certificates, which can easily be forged.
The phony documents undermine governments’ confidence in being able to safely open borders. Israel will begin a pilot program May 23 allowing selected tour groups from abroad to visit, but arriving visitors at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport will have to undergo an antibody test to prove they’ve been vaccinated.
Digital health passes have the potential to alleviate such concerns, especially if vaccination and testing documents are delivered directly to a user’s digital wallet on their phone from a verified, trusted source, such as a known healthcare provider or government entity.
Travel Pass has run trials with up to two dozen airlines.
Travel Pass has run trials with up to two dozen airlines.
Health pass developers also say that their solutions are secure for consumers. Some, such as the IATA Travel Pass and the IBM Digital Health Pass, use blockchain technology to decentralize data storage. Users of the IATA Travel Pass will have control of their own data, except when they pass it along in encrypted fashion to an airline or government for verification. CommonPass data is also stored only on a user’s phone, though a record that a person has been cleared for a specific journey is stored in the cloud so that it can be queried by an airline or border agency.
‘They are rushing out systems. It is inherently open to abuse.’
Still, Barwood noted that any system can be misused. He is concerned that health pass solutions will be vulnerable due to the speed with which they are being developed.
“They are rushing out systems that they are not going to have time to put the security in. It is inherently open to abuse,” Barwood said.
The Verifly app, which Alaska Airlines and American are deploying in the U.S. The app helps travelers easily understand Covid-19 testing and documentation requirements for their destination and streamlines airport check-in.
The Verifly app, which Alaska Airlines and American are deploying in the U.S. The app helps travelers easily understand Covid-19 testing and documentation requirements for their destination and streamlines airport check-in.
Some passes have already been pushed into operation. In the U.S., Alaska Airlines and American are deploying the Verifly app developed by the technology company Daon, and United has incorporated a health pass into its own app. The state of Hawaii, meanwhile, has partnerships with the Clear Health App and CommonPass and has also sketched out plans to develop its own travel health pass.
In addition to Hawaii, CommonPass is working directly with six East African countries as well as Aruba. Airline partners include JetBlue, Lufthansa, Japan Airlines and All Nippon. IATA Travel Pass has run trials with up to two dozen airlines.
Those are a few examples among many. Dozens of private companies have developed health passes for travel or domestic uses, as have some countries, including China and Israel.
JetBlue’s CommonPass digital health pass in action.
JetBlue’s CommonPass digital health pass in action.
Meanwhile, in March the European Commission proposed the establishment of an EU-wide digital certificate to document Covid-19 vaccinations and test results in order to speed the reopening of cross-border traffic within Europe. With the EU initiative to admit vaccinated travelers now on the table, the union’s “green certificate” program could have an outsize role in shaping standards for pass developers in the U.S. and elsewhere.
The Biden administration, however, has said it won’t develop a health pass. Instead, the administration is assisting with private sector efforts.
Unless interoperabililty issues are resolved, the diffuse landscape threatens to make international travel a complicated mess, with flyers required to download multiple apps and solutions and carefully select which one to use on any give trip. That’s why entities as large as the European Commission have called for technological infrastructure to be set up at an international level to allow for the secure issuance of interoperable travel certificates.
Private initiatives are also working toward the goal of interoperability, including the Good Health Pass Collaborative, comprised of a cross-section of more than 100 companies in the travel, technology and healthcare sectors.
Ultimately, said Meyer of CommonPass, it’s not likely there will be one winning app or one global standard. But that doesn’t mean the landscape will be hopelessly complicated. The CommonPass model, he said, is to support multiple standards, so it can read and inspect credentials put forward by sources as divergent, for example, as China, Israel and, recently, France.
Nevertheless, complications for any sort of global alignment remain numerous and extend beyond technology standardization to the wide mix of policies being adopted by individual nations. Already, some countries have opened the door wide to tourism, while others remain largely locked down. Quarantine rules, testing requirements and requirements of proof of vaccination are also differentiators. And going forward, countries will have to decide which vaccinations to accept. Gary Leff of the View From the Wing blog asked during a recent Loyalty Security Association forum whether the U.S. would accept proof of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccination even though that vaccine has not been approved for use stateside.
Questions of politics and policy, as much as anything, have some airlines conceding that travel corridors are the best hope for the near term. During Delta’s April earnings call, CEO Ed Bastian said the carrier is pushing for the reopening of U.S.-U.K. travel by early summer and expressed optimism it could happen. Conversely, Bastian was bearish on U.S.-Asia travel, expecting a broad easing of restrictions to be more than a year off, though he said Delta is hopeful U.S.-South Korea could open more quickly.
Rodrigues, the former Visit Britain and Visa head, noted that the global community has been able to develop worldwide interoperability in the past. It happened with credit card readers between the 1970s and the 1980s. But alignment took approximately a decade to achieve. He expects a long-term trajectory in this case, as well, with health status eventually tracked for travel on a global basis, but only well after the current pandemic has ended.
For now, said Rodrigues, bilateral travel corridors will be the solution.
TW illustration by Jenn Martins