Qantas and Brisbane Airport are trialling digital arrival declarations to replace paper ones

The days of paper arrival cards for international flights are slowly coming to an end and a new digital arrivals process is being introduced.

A trial is being run on select flights between Australia and New Zealand that will allow travelers to complete a border declaration online three days before arriving in Australia.

“The great thing from our point of view is that we can collect the data contained on these pieces of paper up to 72 hours before a passenger travels,” Border Force Commissioner Mike Outram told 7NEWS exclusively from Brisbane Airport as the first test flight arrived. from Auckland.

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The trial involved around 20 passengers disembarking from QF126, and of the five we spoke to, all agreed the online system was better.

“I thought it happened quickly, maybe one or two minutes,” said passenger Kathleen Gaffney.

“I did this on the way to the airport.”

The link to complete the online declaration is built into the Qantas app and passengers must meet certain criteria to be included in the trial.

They must also be individual travelers who have booked an individual ticket.

Border Force used existing Qantas IT resources to create the digital declaration, making it easier to launch the program rather than building an application from scratch.

The questions in the online version are similar to those you face on paper, and the answers should be corrected or updated before you land in case your situation changes.

Justine Saunders, from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, said: “This will be a tool for passengers – ahead of the border – to actually understand what the biosecurity requirements are for the country.”

Biosecurity statistics provided by 7NEWS show that during the 2023-24 financial year, 368,600 high-risk items were intercepted at the border, mainly meat products, contaminated shoes, seeds, rice, herbs and spices.

More than 20 million postcards are printed annually. That’s a lot of paper.

“We can remove the white noise,” Saunders explained. “We can eliminate low-risk passengers from the system and focus on those at high risk.”

This is the third attempt to digitize the arrival process after two previous failures. The latter cost taxpayers $60 million and closed after just five months of operation in mid-2022.

If passengers have a desire to abandon paper, then it is accompanied by a similar desire of officials to switch to digital technologies.

“In today’s world, it’s crazy that our (border) security comes down to a piece of paper,” Outram said.

He described how the paper system was particularly archaic during the pandemic, when health department officials needed to scan incoming paper cards and put them into the system to track potential COVID cases.

Often, Outram said, this takes up to three days, making it extremely difficult to track cases.

Passengers in the trial showed us a QR code on their phone as they exited the plane, which also allowed them to avoid the long queues at Brisbane Airport and exit the terminal much faster.

Jardine Tamati said the digital system was a breeze.

“It’s easier, you’re still on the phone and you don’t have to ask people for a pen,” he said, flashing his QR code and exiting before dozens of other passengers.

Next week the trial will expand to include flights from Wellington and will eventually include all New Zealand airports with direct links to Brisbane.

Eight years before the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane, the modernization and digitization of aspects of the bureaucracy is gaining momentum.

But wider adoption of the digital Australia Travel Declaration requires additional funding to distribute it to airlines and airports.

Brisbane Airport CEO Geert-Jan de Graaf said: “We’re very hopeful that the trial will show that this is a solution that works for all passengers, which is why we’re rolling it out sooner rather than later.”

Border Force Commissioner Mike Outram takes up the top job this month, so the project is likely to be his legacy.

It’s a joint operation with its New Zealand counterpart (the Kiwis already have a digital system for international arrivals) and Outram ends our interview with a sentiment that likely reflects the majority of the 21 million international passengers who arrive in Australia each year.

“I’m really glad to see the end of this piece of paper—it’s the beginning of the end,” he said.