DigiYatra may be adopted by four more airports in March: All the details – Times of India

DigiYatra is a service that offers passengers contactless, paperless check-in and boarding processes based on facial biometrics. The first phase of this service was launched in three airports — Delhi, Bengaluru and Varanasi in December 2022. According to a report by IANS, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has confirmed that the DigiYatra service will be introduced at four more airports — Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Hyderabad by March. Here are all the details about the DigiYatra service, how it works and how it will be implemented at the airports:
DigiYatra in four more airports: How will it be implemented
In a written reply, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has informed the Lok Sabha that the project is in the implementation stage, the report adds. The written reply also states that the expenses needed for the implementation of Digi Yatra will be on the airport operators.
The reply reads: “The Ministry of Civil Aviation does not provide any budgetary support for its implementation. To give wide publicity to Digi Yatra, airport operators and airline operators are making in-flight announcements, providing help-desk support and displaying banners and films etc. at the airports. Publicity is also being done using social media. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has awarded the work for implementation of biometric boarding system at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Varanasi airports.”
What is DigiYatra
The Ministry of Civil Aviation launched the Digi Yatra initiative which is a biometric boarding system that uses facial recognition technology (FRT). This system is designed to offer a hassle-free experience to passengers at airports. DigiYatra’s primary goal is to improve passenger experience by eliminating the requirement of verifying tickets and IDs at multiple touchpoints. This system also aims to achieve better throughput in the existing infrastructure using a digital framework. The FRT-based Digi Yatra central ecosystem has been developed by Dataevolve Solutions. The system was chosen via a national startup challenge which was conducted by Niti Aayog under the Atal Innovation Mission.

DigiYatra passenger verification system: How it works
Digi Yatra is a voluntary facility that offers passengers a seamless verification experience at airports. This system doesn’t store passengers’ personally identifiable information (PII). All the passenger’s data is encrypted and stored in the wallet of the passenger’s smartphone. The data is shared only for a limited time. Passengers need to validate their Digi Yatra ID at the airport of travel origin.
Passenger data is then removed from the system within 24 hours of the flight. Facilities that have already implemented Digi Yatra offers touchless passenger validation via FRT. This system helps users to save time at different touch points including — entry to the airport, security hold area (SHA) and boarding area with no CISF intervention.
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