AA Completes Rollout of Paid Seat Option in Sabre GDS
by Michele McDonald /American Airlines and Sabre Corp. said the carrier’s Preferred and Main Cabin Extra Seats are available for booking by all Sabre agents.
American and Sabre are connecting via XML using IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard.
Cory Garner, American’s managing director, distribution and data commercialization, announced the two companies’ collaboration on the project at the Airlines Reporting Corp. TravelConnect conference in October.
A limited set of travel agencies went live in November.
“I have every interest in the world to put paid seats on many shelves as possible,” Garner said at the time. “We want to make this available to corporate customers.”
Main Cabin Extra provides customers with up to six inches of more legroom and Group 1 boarding.
Preferred Seats allow customers to select seats located toward the front of the cabin or closer to the window or aisle.
If an AAdvantage number is provided, the pricing will adjust according to the customer’s tier status.
Transactions will be settled through ARC, and all content will fit into the agent workflow.
Until now, agents have been able to select seats on a seat map on the Sabre Red desktop, but they have not been able to book paid seats.
Travelport and Amadeus signed agreements to implement an NDC-compliant link with American in 2013. Sabre was the last to sign but the first to implement an agreement, made easier because the two companies are essentially on the same system.
