British Airways this week will begin using mobile health passport tool Verify on flights from London to the United States, and American Airlines is expanding its use of the app in the United States.
Beginning Thursday, travelers on British Airways flights from London can provide digital health documents, including negative Covid-19 test results, to the app and verify that they meet all entry requirements to the United States. Currently, the carrier is operating service to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Houston, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
In the "near future," British Airways also will enable travelers to use the app when flying from the United States to the United Kingdom, according to the carrier.
American already is using the app for inbound international travel to the United States as well as travel to Jamaica, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala from Miami only. As of Wednesday, American is enabling travelers to those countries, as well as the United Kingdom and Canada, to use the app on flights from all of its domestic airports.
British Airways is the first carrier to use the app for travel to the United Kingdom. In a media call on Tuesday, American Airlines director of customer experience innovation Preston Peterson said the carrier is having "ongoing conversations" with its other airline partners in expanding use of the app.
British Airways also has been working with the International Air Transport Association on a digital passport system. In Tuesday's call, British Airways head of business resilience Richard Treeves said that work continues.
"We need to be working with as many options as possible," he said. "We're also hopeful about integration between apps, to find a common standard and how to get apps talking to each other, because we need to find solutions to all the places we fly to."