December 3,2022: The Union Minister for Civil Aviation  Jyotiraditya Scindia has  launched Digi Yatra for three airports in the countr --New Delhi, Varanasi and Bangalore -- to achieve contactless, seamless processing of passengers at airports based on Facial Recognition Technology.
The Minister said that the project envisages a traveller today pass through various check points at the airports through a 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 Digi Yatra app is required using Aadhar based validation and a self-image capture.
About the privacy features of the project, the Minister said that keeping in mind the privacy, there is no central storage of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).  Passenger’s ID and travel credentials are stored in a secure wallet in 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 join the ranks of world class airports like Heathrow in London and Atlanta in United States of America.
The Minister stated the example of Dubai Airport where passenger time up to 40 percent 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 from across 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 on December 1, to be followed by 4 airports -- Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, and Vijayawada by March 2023. Digi Yatra App is available on both IoS and android. It is voluntary is nature.