American Airlines' requirement that travel agencies must to be connected to the carrier's New Distribution Capability technology or lose access to up to 40 percent of fares will take effect April 3, the carrier announced in a memo sent to travel agencies and posted on its website.
American added that all three of the major global distribution systems will be ready by that date, including Sabre, which on Wednesday announced it would be able to offer American's NDC content. Sabre-connected travel buyers, agencies and developer partners will be able to shop, book and service American's NDC content through Sabre's Offer and Order APIs, the Sabre Red 360 agency point-of-sale tool and the GetThere online booking tool, according to Sabre.
Sabre's NDC Readiness
"Those capabilities are available today, it's just that American's content is going live on Monday," Sabre VP of NDC and airline supply Kathy Morgan told BTN. "The only thing that a [travel management company] has to do is place an order to request access for American NDC content, and that is through the Sabre Central Marketplace."
The carrier published its new fare basis code convention on March 27 and starting March 28, travel retailers could view the "exact fares in precise markets" that will be available only through NDC connections starting Monday, according to the letter from American VP of global sales Thomas Rajan. The NDC-only fares can be viewed in EDIFACT, but beginning April 3, travel retailers will need an NDC connection to book and ticket those fares.
Rajan's memo noted that "some providers will offer more servicing features and functionalities in their initial releases than others," but American managing director of airline retailing Neil Geurin said that the carrier's expectation is that "it's going to be a very short period of time when there really is no difference between all three [GDSs]."
Depending on a given TMC's approach to connecting to American's NDC content, "they may have different capabilities," Geurin said. "What Rajan was pointing out is even if the path you pick isn't perfect for what you are looking for today, odds are it's going to be very shortly, or something close to perfect."
For Sabre, it has "shop, book, price, pay, cancel, void, refund, ticket, voluntary changes, schedule change notification and schedule change management for orders or [passenger name records] for single passengers," Morgan said.
What is missing and coming in the middle of the year, Morgan said, are those same capabilities for multiple passengers. "We’ll have those closed in about another quarter," she added.
Sabre and American in the past few months conducted a pilot with 50 TMCs, including the three largest ones, to prepare for April 3. The biggest challenges that came out of that pilot were around items outside of Sabre's "technological integration," Morgan said, characterizing the challenges as related to the operationalization of NDC.
"NDC introduces new workflows," she said. "The way in which agencies need to shop and manage this content is through a graphical path within Sabre Red 360, so there is a change management aspect that the agencies will need to put a plan around and how they are going to train and draw that awareness with their consultants."
It seems certain that even those TMCs in the pilot might have some challenges come Monday. BCD Traveland CWT have written memos voicing concerns about American's move, noting that "no one can offer a seamless customer solution by April 1."
There also are some "pretty big pain points" in the online booking tool space, Morgan added. "It's more around how to address these other gaps in the flows," she said. One such gap relates to unused tickets, which is different in an NDC world, as unused NDC tickets can't be used for traditional tickets and vice versa. "Again, there is some process work that TMCs and other agencies are going to have to put in place. So that's the primary feedback we heard coming out of the pilot."
American anticipates that there will be some "growing pains" through the technology transition, according to Rajan's memo. The carrier recently acknowledged that it would have NDC-trained staff available to answer agency questions, and that there would not be any fees to access the sales support team.
Morgan also stressed that while launching with American is a "huge, huge milestone," the company has experience on this terrain. "American will be the ninth airline we've launched with NDC, and we have several more in the pipeline coming out," she said. "It's important for agencies to understand once you do the work, you have the benefit across all NDC content. … This is a one-time effort that will pay off as more and more NDC content becomes available."