Your Visa Is Digital. Can the Airline Check It?

Travelers like eVisas. Airlines still have to prove the authorisation is real before they board an international flight.

On 16 September 2026, Harry Grewal, IATA Director Airports, Infrastructure and Customer Experience, published Your Visa Is Digital. But Can the Airline Check It?. His point is operational. Before boarding, the airline must confirm the passenger holds the documents required to enter the destination. Get it wrong, and airlines can face fines and removal costs that Grewal, attributing the figure to industry experience as framed by IATA, puts at an average of USD 9,000 per passenger.

Issuance is largely digital. Verification is still a pile of formats. This note is for airline compliance, OCC, DCS and product, and for OTA partners upstream. Our ETA travel-readiness note covers late discovery, the wrong channel, and the 40-minute window. This note covers how proof of a digital authorisation reaches the carrier, and why fragmented formats still break check-in.

This article is for operational planning. It is not legal advice.

The verification problem

Grewal's contrast is that travelers benefit from simple eVisa issuance while airlines inherit complex verification. Proof that an eVisa has been issued might be:

In practice, he writes, there is little in the way of a standard approach. Check-in agents must be ready for passengers travelling anywhere, including transit points that also have visa requirements, with no shared proof format across programmes.

Grewal notes that over 100 countries issue eVisas. Convenience for passengers without a verification standard for airlines is, in his framing, digitising fragmentation.

iAPI and ICAO digital travel authorisation

Grewal points to IATA's Control Authorities Working Group best practices, Non-Physical Authorizations to Travel: Best Practices for Issuers and Verifiers (2026), building on work at ICAO. Two mechanisms sit at the centre.

Interactive Advance Passenger Information (iAPI). During check-in, the airline sends passenger information electronically to the destination government and receives a real-time response. The government can confirm whether the passenger meets the requirements for the journey. Grewal reports that airlines cite documentation compliance rates up to 20 times higher for countries with comprehensive iAPI systems than for those relying on manual checks. He also states that fewer than 30 countries currently operate iAPI systems. That spread is the backlog signal: iAPI is not a niche extra on long-haul leisure markets that already see heavy eVisa traffic.

ICAO Digital Travel Authorization (DTA). The DTA provides standardized, digitally signed proof that an electronic authorisation has been issued. Essential information is presented in a consistent format that can be authenticated, instead of every country producing a different confirmation. Grewal notes the two mechanisms can work together: iAPI verifies status with a government in real time, and a DTA provides standardized proof of the authorisation, including when an iAPI check is unavailable.

What to do while adoption is uneven

Grewal is explicit that universal iAPI and DTA adoption will take time, and that national security concerns are in play. He does not treat that as a reason to wait. Governments can align existing visa confirmations with international standards, develop verification methods that integrate with airline check-in systems, and involve airlines before launching new programmes.

He stresses that aligning with global standards leaves a state's authority over who needs a visa, entry criteria, and border-control policy where it is. The question he leaves governments with is not only how to issue a visa digitally, but how an airline on the other side of the world will know that it is valid.

Airline checklist

Treat Grewal's piece as a systems framing for the backlog. Fines, certificates, and government agreements stay with your compliance team.

OTA checklist

Grewal's USD 9,000 average for fines and removal costs, as stated in the IATA opinion, is a reminder that a verification failure is a profit-and-loss event. For the broader commercial framing, see How airlines reduce denied boarding with visa data and the denied-boarding costs checklist. Do not invent a network-level inadmissible rate from this article. Use your finance baseline, and cite IATA figures only as Grewal attributes them.

If you are mapping eVisa verification modes across a network, or aligning OTA status events with what airlines can authenticate at check-in, SimpleVisa helps structure eligibility, application, and status flows so a Timatic lookup, an iAPI response, and a PDF upload stay separate flags. Book a demo with airline compliance and OTA product on the same thread.

This article summarises publicly stated positions from IATA (Harry Grewal, 16 September 2026) and the linked CAWG best-practices PDF for operational planning by travel businesses. It is not legal advice, not an IATA compliance certificate, and not a substitute for your airline's government agreements, Timatic or DCS configuration, or counsel. Verify iAPI availability, DTA adoption, and programme rules with the relevant authorities and your own compliance team. The USD 9,000 average and the "up to 20 times" compliance contrast are quoted from Grewal's IATA piece only. We do not independently audit them.