DigiYatra Explained: How to Enrol, Where It Works and What Happens to Your Data

What is DigiYatra?

DigiYatra is a facial-recognition entry system for domestic flights at Indian airports. Instead of showing your ID and boarding pass to a CISF guard at the terminal door and again before security, you look into a camera and an e-gate opens. It is free and voluntary. The regular queues, where you show a paper or phone boarding pass with your ID, still exist at every airport, and nobody can insist that you enrol.

The system is run by the DigiYatra Foundation, a not-for-profit company set up under the Ministry of Civil Aviation's DigiYatra policy. Its shareholders are the Airports Authority of India and the private operators of the Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kochi airports. It went live in December 2022 at Delhi, Bengaluru and Varanasi and has been expanding since.

Which airports have DigiYatra?

At the time of review DigiYatra worked at more than two dozen airports, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati and Varanasi, with new airports added every few months. The airport list inside the app is the one to trust, because a new terminal can go live for some gates before others.

What DigiYatra replaces differs slightly from airport to airport:

Frisking and the X-ray of your cabin bag stay exactly the same for everyone. DigiYatra shortens the ID-check queues, not the security queue itself.

How do you enrol on DigiYatra?

Enrolment takes about five minutes on a phone, and you do it once.

1. Install the official Digi Yatra app from the Play Store or App Store. Check that the publisher is the DigiYatra Foundation; lookalike apps have circulated and the foundation has warned travellers about them.
2. Register with your mobile number and the OTP.
3. Add your identity credential. The standard route is Aadhaar, fetched through DigiLocker or verified with an Aadhaar OTP. If you do not have Aadhaar, check whether the app currently offers an alternative document.
4. Take a live selfie. The app matches it with your Aadhaar photo and stores the result as a verified credential.
5. Before each trip, add your boarding pass by scanning its barcode or importing it, and share it with the departure airport. That is what lets the e-gate recognise you.

Do the boarding-pass step before you leave home. Web check-in, then add the pass at least an hour ahead; a credential shared from the kerb outside the terminal sometimes takes a while to reach the gate system.

Your name on Aadhaar and on the airline ticket must match. An initial expanded on one and not the other, or a surname changed after marriage, is the most common reason the credential fails at the gate.

What happens at the airport?

Look for the DigiYatra lanes at the terminal entrance. Scan your boarding pass barcode if the gate asks for it, then look at the camera. Take off sunglasses and caps, and lower a mask if you are wearing one. The gate opens in a couple of seconds when the match works. When it does not, step across to a manual lane and show your ID and pass as usual, which is why you should always carry the physical ID or a DigiLocker copy anyway.

At security, use the DigiYatra e-gate before the frisking area where one exists. At the boarding gate, follow the airline's instructions; many gates still scan the boarding pass.

Is DigiYatra safe, and what happens to your data?

DigiYatra uses what it calls a self-sovereign identity model. According to the foundation, your verified ID and face data sit in an encrypted wallet on your phone rather than in a central database. When you share a boarding pass, the details needed for that flight go to the departure airport's system, and the airport is meant to purge them within 24 hours of departure.

That design is better than a central biometric register, but there are fair questions to keep in mind:

• The foundation is a private not-for-profit company, so it is not covered by the Right to Information Act in the way a ministry is.
• India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, is being brought into force in phases, and how it applies to systems like this will become clearer over time.
• Some travellers have reported staff at airport entrances enrolling passengers in the queue without explaining what they were signing up for.

Practical rules follow. Enrol yourself, on your own phone, from the official app. Do not hand your phone to someone at the airport who offers to set it up for you. If you change phones you will need to enrol again, and you can delete your credentials from the app's settings. If you would rather not use facial recognition at all, the manual lanes remain open to you.

Who cannot use DigiYatra yet?

• International travellers. At the time of review DigiYatra covered domestic flights only. International departures go through immigration counters, and enrolled Indian citizens can use the separate Fast Track Immigration programme at major airports.
• Children. Each traveller needs their own verified credential, so check what the app currently allows for minors before relying on it for a family trip.
• Travellers without Aadhaar, including most foreign nationals, unless the app offers them another document.
• One person holding the whole group's passes. The credential is tied to one face and one phone, so each adult enrols separately.

Is DigiYatra worth setting up?

If you fly domestic more than two or three times a year from a big airport, yes. At Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru during the early-morning and evening rushes, the entry queue alone can take 15–30 minutes, and the DigiYatra gates usually move faster. The gain is smaller at quiet regional airports, and DigiYatra lanes can build their own queue now that many passengers have enrolled.

Treat it as a time saver, not a reason to arrive later. Airlines still close check-in and bag drop about 45–60 minutes before domestic departures, and the security queue is the same for everyone.

For the rest of the airport routine, see our guides to baggage rules on Indian airlines, lounge access and your rights when a flight is delayed or cancelled. Fares and route details are on our flights page.