New IATA Resolution Addresses NDC Concerns

IATA members approved a new resolution that confirms their support of the New Distribution Capability and addresses key objections to NDC.

Adopted at IATA’s annual general meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, this week, the new resolution is a separate document from Resolution 787, which laid the framework for NDC.

The new resolution apparently seeks to put to rest concerns over some of its perceived ambiguities.

For example, the new resolution “affirms that the enhanced standards should support current shopping methods, including anonymous shopping by customers, while adding capabilities such as ‘shopping basket,’ personalization and flexibility for the future.”

Privacy concerns
Some critics of NDC have maintained that anonymous shopping will become a thing of the past for airlines that adopt the new standards. They fear that customers will be forced to provide their personal details in order to receive airline offers.

Those claims have brought NDC under the scrutiny of an advisory body to the European Commission, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party.

The European Commission group has warned IATA that because NDC envisions the collection of customer data, “some national data protection authorities must be consulted before starting any local pilots. Moreover, such pilots have to comply with European and national legal frameworks.”

The new IATA resolution addresses this issue, noting that “airlines will continue to remain subject to relevant passenger privacy protection laws and regulations regardless of how they choose to distribute their products and services.”

Airlines ‘free to decide’
As to whether NDC is mandatory for IATA airlines, the new resolution “confirms that airlines and other industry players would be free to decide whether or not to adopt the enhanced standards to support some or all of their distribution needs.”

It also “encourages the active participation of the entire distribution chain in the development and adoption of the enhanced standards” and “affirms IATA’s continued support of the existing standards for A4A/IATA Reservations Interline Message Procedures and the Passenger Airport Data Interchange Standards.”

The resolution also affirms that each airline “must make its individual, independent choice of price, product and service offers, and make independent choices of distribution strategies and partners, in accordance with applicable competition laws.”

NDC and travel agents
IATA director general Tony Tyler told delegates to its annual general meeting that “we are actively engaging regulators around the world to ensure that there is a clear understanding of the value that NDC will bring to the experience of buying travel though an agent — more choices, better quality information and the potential for personalized offers.”

Noting that “we are not without opponents,” he added, “frankly, some of them are not telling the truth.”

IATA already has a few NDC pilots in the works, according to Yanik Hoyles, head of the NDC Program. He would not disclose the identities of the participants, but Jim Davidson, chief executive officer of Farelogix, has said that his company will be participating.