The World Economic Forum and The Commons Project Foundation announced Tuesday (25 November) that Airport Council International (ACI) World, representing nearly 2,000 airports globally, and five global airlines have joined the CommonTrust Network and are joining efforts to help promote the CommonPass, which has been designed to work as a digital health pass to enable safe, COVID-19-free international travel. Other organisations like the International Air Transport Association (IATA) are also working on similar digital health passes.
“The members of the CommonTrust Network are coming together to implement an inclusive global network designed to empower individuals with digital access to their health information so they can protect and improve their health, and demonstrate their health status to safely return to travel, work, school, and life, while protecting their data privacy,” said Paul Meyer, CEO of The Commons Project Foundation. “We welcome collaboration with public and private stakeholders across many sectors, including ACI World and IATA in aviation.”
“As the world works to overcome the pandemic, all countries face the challenge of how to reopen borders for travel and commerce while protecting their populations’ health,” ACI World Director General Luis Felipe de Oliveira said. “Key to this will be a globally-harmonised approach underpinned by cooperation and consistency between all players in the aviation industry. The CommonTrust Network and CommonPass will help to foster this consistent approach, especially as it will include more than just the aviation industry,” said de Oliveira.
CommonPass was first successfully trialled in October on Cathay Pacific Airways and United Airlines flights between Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and New York. Government observers of the trials included the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and the United Kingdom Border Force and Ministry for Transport. CommonTrust Network airlines JetBlue, Lufthansa, Swiss International Airlines, United Airlines, and Virgin Atlantic will begin the roll-out of CommonPass in December on select flights departing from New York, Boston, London, and Hong Kong.
This support from the world’s airports for the CommonTrust Network and CommonPass comes a week after the three airline alliances – oneworld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance – called for a globally harmonised approach for validation and authentication of testing and vaccination, highlighting CommonPass.
The CommonTrust Network is enabled by a global network of labs, vaccine distributors, and health care providers that agree to provide individuals with digital access to their own health information using open, globally-interoperable standards (e.g. HL7 FHIR, W3C verifiable credentials). The network includes hundreds of health systems covering thousands of locations in the United States and a growing network of labs and health care providers around the world.
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