Ministry of Civil Aviation Mandates Air Suvidha Portal for International Passengers

The Ministry of Civil Aviation and Ministry of Health & Family Welfare have revised Air Suvidha Portal with the addition of a contactless self-declaration. Filling of the self-declaration is made mandatory for the international travellers arriving in India. The Ministry of Civil Aviation launched Air Suvidha Portal in August 2020. It helps passengers feed the details of their travel and final stay, along with RTPCR, Vaccination status, etc., on the portal. Besides providing international passengers hassle-free and queue-free air travel, the portal also helps authorities in contact tracing. The portal is now updated with new travel guidelines in the light of Omicron scare. All international passengers arriving in India are mandated to declare their current health status prior to boarding on the Air Suvidha Portal. They also have to upload the required documents including a copy of Passport, PCR Negative Certificate from a Test conducted within 72 hours of departure and the Vaccination Certificate. For immigration, the copy received in e-mail is essential on arrival in India and has to be verified at the APHO counter. All applications from ‘at risk’ countries are marked with H and red band and others are green. This helps in smooth on arrival segregation and processing. This list is dynamically updated to keep up with MOHFW updates. Application also takes into account countries visited in the last 14 days to highlight ‘at risk’ applications. This field is also made into multi-select drop-down option for standardization. There is an updated FAQ list and customer care link along with the latest advisory at the start of the portal. For ‘At Risk’ countries passengers are advised to pre-book their test on arrival test and the link to the respective testing facility is provided to the passengers on SDF submission. The updated list of countries of “at-risk” include the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Ghana, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Tanzania, Hong Kong, and Israel. While Air Suvidha portal assisted 2,51,210 passengers from December 01-05. Over 1 crore passengers have been benefitted from the Air Suvidha portal since August 2020.