IATA to Mark NDC Milestone

IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) will mark another milestone on July 15.

IATA’s Passenger and Airport Data Interchange Standards board, which oversees all technical standards developed under IATA’s auspices, is slated to validate NDC version 1.1.4 for shopping, booking, servicing, payment, and ticketing.

NDC is a technology standard created to facilitate airline merchandising, including ancillary product sales and personalized offers.

In addition, Paul Tilstone, the former Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) executive who is currently serving as IATA’s “envoy” to the corporate travel world, is planning to publish a report in June on corporate buyers’ attitudes toward NDC.

‘Concrete feedback’
Meanwhile, IATA is targeting a minimum of eight live deployments of the latest NDC schemas this year.

Some of the pilots are focusing on deployment of end-to-end scenarios, now that a full end-to-end set of schemas is available. The previous lack of a full set made it difficult for travel agents to participate in pilots.

IATA also urged early-adopter airlines to share knowledge they have acquired in the course of implementation.

“Although there has been great progress in the industry’s overall understanding of NDC, there is still a need to provide concrete feedback on how to best to get started with NDC, based on real-life situations experienced by early adopting airlines,” IATA said in a report on last year’s pilots.

Live deployments
Three live deployments occurred in 2014:

• Hainan Airlines integrated with existing TravelSky processes to fulfill shopping transactions. (TravelSky is the Chinese GDS and airline IT provider.)

• Shandong Airlines enhanced its shopping process with multimedia content of its premium economy seat product. It also facilitated the sale of travel insurance through travel agencies.

• United Airlines enabled the distribution of its Economy Plus seats through Amadeus travel agents in the U.S.

Other pilots
In other pilots launched in 2014:

• Swiss International is focusing on managing dynamic pricing requests and measuring response time with scenarios such as flexible date shopping, comparison shopping, ancillary product shopping, and personalized shopping.

• Qatar Airways aims to distribute bag- and seat-related ancillary products to its pilot agents.

• Air Canada is using an airline profile to test the effectiveness of offers and manage scalability challenges. The profile is created by Air Canada, stored and distributed by ATPCO, and used by FareCompare.

• Virgin Australia is evaluating the capability available for the distribution of rich content and of personalized offers. The pilot is also reviewing the proposed NDC security model.