AAHK trials digital health pass on Hong Kong to Los Angeles flight

Credit: Hong Kong International Airport

Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK), together with its business partners and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), has successfully conducted a trial of a digital health pass at Hong Kong International Airport (HKG), signifying its commitment to providing a seamless travel experience for its passengers under the new normal as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Aiming to provide a simple and efficient means of conducting health document checks and verification processes on both ends of a passenger journey, the trial was conducted in partnership with Los Angeles International Airport, Cathay Pacific, The Commons Project – one of the major digital health pass developers for international travel – and Prenetics, a COVID-19 test provider.

As part of the trial, air crew members of Cathay Pacific role-played as passengers and took a COVID-19 test at Hong Kong Airport‘s testing centre. Test results were then sent to these passengers through a mobile application in the form of a digital health pass, which was then presented to the airline staff for check-in. Upon arrival at Los Angeles International Airport, the role-playing passengers presented their digital health pass to local staff for validation and entered Los Angeles successfully.

Vivian Cheung, Executive Director of Airport Operations at AAHK, said: “As COVID-19 tests and vaccinations are poised to become new essentials for air travellers in the future, a digital solution is required to effectively integrate this new requirement into the existing digitalised travel process, from laboratory to check-in and to landing”. 

Hong Kong Airport has been collaborating with major hub airports across the world to facilitate the adoption of digital solutions to tackle challenges such as: the trustworthiness of paper reports; the diversified and dynamic entry requirements across countries and regions; long queues for passengers for document check; and labour intensive checking duties for airline staff.

“At Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), we are working closely with our international airport partners to create standardised protocols that will support the safe return to travel,” said Justin Erbacci, Chief Executive Officer of LAWA. “We applaud our partners at AAHK for successfully piloting a digital health pass as we work together to embrace innovation and technology that will reimagine air travel in response to the global pandemic.”

“Resumption of air travel in a safe way is our top priority. Traffic recovery is hard to be sustainable with the manual handling of paper records without error to match the requirements of each country, which could also be changed from time to time.  We will continue to work with industry partners, including the government, to make HKG one of the first airports in the world to adopt digital health pass solutions,” added Cheung.