India's contactless airport travel system, Digi Yatra, has entered its international trial phase at seven airports, extending facial-recognition-based passenger processing beyond domestic flights. The Ministry of Civil Aviation initiative will initially cover eligible Indian nationals holding electronic passports and travelling on international flights operated by Air India and IndiGo, with trials scheduled to continue until December 2026.
The participating airports are Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Cochin, Mumbai, Chennai and Amritsar. The trials will test whether passport-based digital identity credentials can reduce repeated document checks at selected stages of international departures, including terminal entry, security hold areas and boarding gates, depending on the infrastructure available at each airport.
Unlike the domestic Digi Yatra process, the international version requires passengers to create a digital credential using their chip-enabled e-passports. Travellers must scan the passport's Machine Readable Zone through the Digi Yatra mobile application, read the embedded electronic chip using a smartphone with Near Field Communication (NFC) capability, capture a selfie an...