The ‘incoming passenger card’ for international arrivals is one step away from being discarded for good.
International travelers heading to Australia this year will soon be able to leave behind the outdated orange incoming passenger card, replacing it with the streamlined Australia Travel Declaration (ATD) digital solution.
Introduced as a pilot program on select Qantas flights from New Zealand to Brisbane last year, the ATD app has expanded to cover all international Qantas flights arriving in Brisbane, including the airline’s Los Angeles route, and now supports multi-passenger bookings.
While the ATD app is the preferred method, the traditional paper Incoming Passenger Card is still available as an optional manual alternative.
Integrating the ATD directly into the Qantas app has likely accelerated the trial’s launch, offering a faster path to market compared to the Australian Border Force (ABF) creating a separate website from scratch.
This approach also paves the way for other airlines to incorporate the ATD into their own apps, offering travelers a smooth in-app experience.
Eventually, the Australia Travel Declaration will have its own government-managed “purpose-built website”—and likely an app—for completing the digital pass, as confirmed by an Australian Border Force spokesperson to Executive Traveller.
In 2025, more Australian airports and international routes are expected to join the ongoing pilot phase, with hopes for additional airline apps integrating ATD functionality.
How the ATD app works:
Passengers have three days to complete the digital ATD, which is currently housed within the Qantas app.
Travelers who prefer the current paper card can continue using it during the trial period.
Once the declaration is completed, passengers receive a digital pass with a QR code sent to both the Qantas app and their chosen email address. This QR code is presented to Australian Border Force officers upon arrival for quick processing through border control.
Third time’s the charm…
As Executive Traveller recently pointed out, the shift from the paper incoming passenger card to a digital version has been long overdue.
This marks Australia’s third attempt to replace the traditional paper-based incoming passenger card.
The 2016 government initiative, ‘seamless traveller,’ which led to the introduction of passport smartgates using facial recognition, also had plans for a digital arrivals card trial in early 2018. However, those plans never came to fruition.
Global technology powerhouse Accenture invested $60 million of taxpayer funds over three years to create the Digital Passenger Declaration platform, which included a smartphone app launched in February 2022 as travel resumed after the pandemic.
However, the Digital Passenger Declaration quickly proved disastrous on almost every front, as any traveler from that period will recall, leading to its termination just five months later, in July 2022.
These two previous failures may help explain the Australian Border Force’s cautious approach in “beta-testing” the Australia Travel Declaration, with a gradual rollout across carefully selected markets.
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