Canary Islands work with UNWTO on safe flight project
The Spanish Canary Islands and the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) are working together to establish ‘safe’ flight using a digital health passport
The aim of the project is to help passengers to travel safely in the future; and by enabling this, it is hoped that confidence in travelling with be boosted and tourism in the region will resultantly start to recover.
The pilot flight, scheduled to take place in July, will see passengers use an app on their smartphones that stores their encrypted medical records. Each passenger’s digital health profile will be uploaded and updated by a health entity accredited by the Ministry of Health. This digital health passport has been developed by Canarian company Hi + Card.
The Tourism Minister for the Canary Islands, Yaiza Castilla, said the move would help passengers travel with ease and peace of mind. He said: “The necessary steps are being taken so that passengers can travel with ease and airlines can, in turn, increase the capacity of their flights.” Travellers and airlines, he commented, could be assured that, thanks to the digital passport, all passengers on the flight would be certified as Covid-19 free.
Zurab Pololikashvili, Director General of the UNWTO, said: “In these exceptional times, in which the Covid-19 pandemic has shaken the world economy and threatened our tourism sector, innovation becomes the cornerstone of the recuperation.”