Mumbai, Kochi among 6 airports that will get Dig Yatra facility this month

The Digi Yatra facility for quick check-in by passengers will be launched at 6 more airports including Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Lucknow, Jaipur, and Guwahati this month, according to a Civil Aviation Ministry statement.

Since its launch by Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia on December 1, 2022, at three airports, New Delhi, Varanasi, and Bengaluru, Digi Yatra has been implemented at four more airports, Vijayawada, Pune, Hyderabad, and Kolkata increasing the number of Digi Yatra airports to seven. With the addition of these six airports, the total number of Digi Yatra-enabled airports will go up to 13.

Digi Yatra is a mobile application-based facility conceived to achieve contactless, seamless processing of passengers at airports based on Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). It helps travellers pass through various checkpoints at the airports through paperless and contactless processing using facial features to validate their identity and travel details.

The Digi Yatra process makes the ID, Travel and other documents’ verification faster as passengers do not have to handover physical documents to CISF security, airlines and other agencies at the airport.

As of August 10, 2023, Digi Yatra has been used by 34,60,454 passengers while the Digi Yatra mobile application user base stands at 1.29 million.

The government has clarified that in the Digi Yatra process, there is no central storage of passenger’s Personally Identifiable Information data. All the passengers’ data is encrypted and stored in the wallet of their smartphone. It is shared only between the passenger and the airport of travel origin, where the passenger’s Digi Yatra ID needs to be validated. The data is deleted from the airport’s system within 24 hours of departure of the flight. The data is shared by passengers directly, only when they travel and only to the airport from which their flight originates.

IN Bureau