The government has quietly extended its DigiYatra facial-recognition programme beyond domestic flights, opening international departure trials at seven major airports from 1 November 2026. A notice published on 12 November confirms that Indian nationals holding e-passports and travelling on selected Air India and IndiGo flights can now complete terminal entry, security and boarding simply by scanning their face at automated e-gates in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi and Amritsar. DigiYatra, run by a public–private foundation anchored by the Airports Authority of India, already boasts more than 26 million domestic users. The international pilot is the next step toward what the civil-aviation ministry calls “full-stack, paperless travel across borders”. Passengers enrol once in the DigiYatra mobile app, upload a selfie and passport, and receive an encrypted travel token that is automatically shared with airport systems and the airline’s departure control. During the trial phase, only travellers on specific routes—such as Air India’s Delhi–New York AI 101 and IndiGo’s Bengaluru–Singapore 6E 1791—can opt in. Those passengers bypass manual document checks at entry gates, the security hold area and the boarding gate; immigration formalities still require a passport until the Bureau of Immigration completes back-end integration early in 2027. Airport operators say the biometric lanes process up to 200 passengers per hour compared with 125 on manual counters, easing chronic congestion in peak outbound banks. For corporate mobility managers the benefit is predictability: early-morning international departures at Delhi’s Terminal 3—infamous for 45-minute queues—are already seeing wait times fall below 15 minutes for DigiYatra users. The trials run through 31 December. If performance and privacy audits pass, DigiYatra International will expand to 15 airports and cover OCI card-holders and foreign frequent flyers who pre-register. Employers should alert travelling staff to enrol and carry a physical passport as fallback while the pilot matures.
Source: The TripKeeper / PIB
