India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation confirmed overnight that the Air Suvidha portal – first used during the Covid-19 pandemic – has been rebuilt as Air Suvidha 2.0 and is now mandatory for every international arrival, regardless of vaccination status or nationality. The re-launch, effective 17 July 2026, is a direct response to Ebola outbreaks in Central Africa and is designed to give Port Health Officers real-time data before passengers disembark. The form must be completed no earlier than 24 hours before the scheduled departure of the first leg into India. Airlines are already coding the API call into web-check-in; passengers without an acknowledgement QR will be marked “DOCS NOT OK”. Frequent flyers report that OTPs still route only to Indian mobile numbers, so assignees without local sims should designate a colleague or relocation agent to receive codes. Data flows automatically to the Bureau of Immigration’s Advance Passenger Information System, enabling risk-based screening queues at 13 major airports. Officials say the system cut average health-clearance time from nine to three minutes in pilot runs at Delhi and Mumbai last week. For companies, the operational impact is two-fold. Mobility teams must incorporate the form into pre-trip workflows – similar to the revived Australia Digital Passenger Declaration – and update travel-tracking dashboards to capture the Air Suvidha QR as proof of compliance. Secondly, privacy officers should note that the form now asks for 21-day travel history and Indian accommodation details, raising data-minimisation questions under EU and Indian DPDP regulations. Failure to comply carries practical rather than punitive risk: non-compliant passengers will be routed to secondary screening and could face quarantine or inadmissibility if symptomatic. During the monsoon peak, even a 30-minute delay may cause onward-connection mis-loads. Early adoption therefore becomes a competitive advantage for project teams rotating staff through India.
