All Qantas international flights moving to digital arrivals card

Qantas will soon make Australia’s new digital arrivals card available through its app for all inbound overseas flights.

The airline has been partnering with the Australian government to trial the Australia Travel Declaration (ATD) – which replaces the flimsy orange passenger declaration card – on selected Qantas flights into Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne since October 2024.

“This pilot program will continue to be rolled out across inbound international Qantas flights at remaining capital cities before the end of 2026,” says the Australian Border Force.

As the ATD is integrated into the Qantas app, it can automatically pre-fill the digital form with most of the necessary passenger and flight details, making the ATD easier and quicker to complete.

Other airlines can also build the ATD into their own apps.

For most travellers, this orange card can't be gone soon enough.

Most countries with a digital arrivals card or Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) rely on a single government app.

While the Australian Border Force has no plans to launch its own app, a web-based version of the Australia Travel Declaration will be available “before the end of 2027.”

Across 2027 to mid-2028, the ATD will be phased in at all Australian international airports and seaports, with the existing paper cards remaining available as needed.

Paper arrivals cards will still be available as needed.

Passengers have three days before their flight arrives in Australia to fill out the digital ATD.

After completing the declaration, they receive a digital pass with a QR code through both the Qantas app and their nominated email address.

This QR code is then shown to ABF officers upon arrival for clearance through border controls.

The Australian Travel Declaration is already integrated into the Qantas app.

Third time’s the charm...

Replacing the paper incoming passenger card with a digital version is long overdue.

This is now the third time Australia has attempted to replace the paper-based incoming passenger card.

The Government’s ‘seamless traveller’ initiative of 2016, which was behind the rollout of passport smartgates using facial ID, also included plans – which never materialised – for a digital arrivals card to be trialled in early 2018.

This is the third time the Australian Border Force has trialled a digital solution for inbound passengers.

Global IT giant Accenture then spent $60 million of taxpayer money across a staggering three years to develop the Digital Passenger Declaration platform, including a smartphone app which went live in February 2022 as post-pandemic travel kicked in.

But the Digital Passenger Declaration was so appallingly bad in just about every measure – as any traveller of the time can attest – that it was axed after only five months, in July 2022.

Perhaps these two failed attempts explain the ABF’s abundance of caution in ‘testing’ the Australia Travel Declaration with a staged rollout across a series of tightly controlled markets.

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