Avinor is rolling out an ambitious end-to-end touchless travel programme to tackle the impact of Covid-19 and help restore traveller confidence ahead of the summer season.

The firm operates 44 state-owned airports in Norway.

Passengers will soon be able to begin to check-in, drop their bags, pass through security, and board the aircraft without interpersonal contact, or the need to touch physical machines, thanks to new social distancing processes and technology from Amadeus and ICM, an Amadeus company.

Following deployment of the new approach, a passenger checks-in for a flight remotely and they receive a boarding pass barcode sent to their mobile phone, which also acts as a coupon to print the passenger’s bag tag.

Upon arrival at the terminal the passenger presents the barcode to a self-serve kiosk and the passenger’s baggage tag is automatically printed.

Next, the passenger simply attaches the tag and deposits the bag into the baggage system with no support from agents required.

Avinor’s in-house team have re-engineered their self-service bag drop units with a new smart configuration of the existing barcode scanners and passenger dialogue in order to make the process touchless.

Avinor airports already offer touchless boarding, with passengers able to present their boarding pass stored on their phone in order to authenticate and board the aircraft.

The new touchless experience will be available initially at Norway’s four hub airports: beginning with its introduction at Oslo from today.

This will be followed by Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim - which together represent more than 66 per cent of all departures.

In total, seventeen airports will be upgraded to deliver the nationwide touchless experience.

The service will be available initially for passengers flying on the national carriers; SAS, Norwegian Air and Widerøe.

Brede Nielsen, group chief information officer at Avinor, commented: “Given our unique geography many Norwegians depend on their local airport for both business and leisure travels.

“Several domestic routes serve more than a million passengers every year.”

He continued: “Our passengers can count on us to take necessary measures according to advice from Norwegian health authorities.

“This reduces the risk of being exposed to infectious virus to an absolute minimum and we are confident that travellers will welcome our new touchless approach.

Thanks to the cloud-native environment, Amadeus has been able to develop the new touchless check-in application by collaborating virtually with global teams based in Australia, France and Spain, and without needing to visit any of the 44 airports.