Two industry
standards-making bodies, the Open AXIS Group and the OpenTravel Alliance, on
Friday agreed to work together to align efforts in creating XML-based airline
distribution standards for the selling of ancillary services.
The Open AXIS Group,
launched this summer to promote XML-based standards for distributing ancillary
services, and the OpenTravel Alliance, founded in 1999 by industry participants
as a vendor-agnostic, pan-travel-industry standards-making group for
distribution, said on Friday that they agreed to "cooperate fully in their
efforts to advocate and promote an optimal electronic messaging structure for
airline system connectivity used in content distribution while allowing each
organization to maintain its individual goals and objectives."
Major North American
airlines founded Open AXIS this year to build an XML schema, originally
developed by Farelogix, as the industry standard to support what it called "the
full range of airline transactions," including booking, PNR management,
ticketing, exchange, refunds, merchandizing, electronic miscellaneous document
management and others.
"There is no point in
having two disparate and conflicting sets of standard XML structures for the
airline industry," OpenTravel Alliance executive director Valyn Perini
said in a statement. "OpenTravel has a history of working with other
industry associations to create implementable, interoperable distribution
standards that meet the needs of suppliers, their trading partners and their
customers, and we’re happy to build the same type of relationship with Open
AXIS Group."
Open AXIS executive director
Jim Young added, "Open AXIS Group has established a proven XML schema as
the baseline for its standard and we will work closely with our members and the
OpenTravel Alliance without duplicating efforts. Together, we will adopt,
promote, enhance and maintain this schema to create a robust industry standard
that addresses the needs of both the supply and demand sides of the travel
supply chain."