The Airline Moonshot: A Mission Without a Shared Vision

In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before Congress and set a bold vision: the United States would land a man on the moon. He secured funding, expanded NASA’s scope, and rallied the nation behind a common goal. Eight years later, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. 

Kennedy’s moonshot worked because it was more than just an aspiration. It was a shared mission. He united all stakeholders, removed obstacles and ensured funding and operational support across every level. 

In 2012, IATA’s then-Director General, Tony Tyler, launched a moonshot for commercial aviation: New Distribution Capability. The vision was ambitious—modernizing airline retailing, moving away from EDIFACT data transmission and giving airlines more control over their products. But unlike Kennedy, IATA and the airlines failed to engage, rally or gain the support of all the relevant parties.  

No Mission Control

More than a decade later, NDC remains fragmented and inconsistent. Airlines pursued their own implementations, GDSs and agencies bore massive unaccounted-for costs, and corporate customers were left in the middle of a blame game.  

John Kotter’s classic change management principles—creating urgency, forming a coalition and removing obstacles—were ignored. IATA announced NDC without first securing buy-in (or even any input) from agencies, GDSs or corporate customers. Unlike NASA, which was empowered to coordinate a unified effort, IATA left each airline to figure it out on their own—resulting in multiple, incompatible versions of NDC. The lack of common standards has led to complexity, added costs and a travel buying experience that is, in many ways, worse than before. 

While OTAs have driven much of NDC’s early adoption in leisure travel, corporate bookings are far more sophisticated—requiring integrated tools, compliance checks and policy controls. These complexities were largely overlooked. As progress failed to materialize, airlines removed content and took punitive action on agencies and GDSs. This is where NDC’s failure is most apparent. Instead of a coordinated effort that benefited all parties, it became a patchwork of self-interest, forcing intermediaries and customers to absorb the costs while airlines reaped the rewards.  

Cost of Fragmentation

The consequences of this misalignment are staggering. Moving from EDIFACT-based processes to NDC required a massive overhaul of technology, workflows and infrastructure, but IATA and airlines offered no financial support or incentives to ease the transition. The burden fell entirely on agencies, GDSs and corporate buyers.  

Despite early promises of a seamless, customer-centric experience, the reality has been far from it. Many airlines tried to make it seem simple and positioned the agencies and GDSs as holding on to legacy and outdated systems, all to push their own priorities. This was further complicated by some airlines removing NDC content from traditional channels while pursuing direct sales strategies. Many corporate buyers now report higher costs, reduced transparency and a lack of parity in their preferred booking channels. 

Surcharges Say the Quiet Part Out Loud

The latest developments make the true intent of many airline strategies clear. In May 2025, The Beat reported that another major airline is now applying per-segment “aggregator surcharges” on NDC bookings made via GDSs—fees that vary by geographic market. Dominant European and Australian airlines are leading these efforts to add fees and inhibit GDS and agency bookings. These fees are in addition to existing EDIFACT GDS surcharges, creating a layered system of penalties for choosing traditional distribution partners.  

The result? Agencies and GDSs that spent years adapting to NDC are now being hit with new costs—just as they catch up. These surcharges don’t reflect pass-through GDS costs; they’re inflated, opaque and variable. And critically, they apply even when booking NDC content—undermining the argument that NDC was ever about better offers, shopping or servicing. 

This isn’t modernization. It’s monetization.  

It’s like grocery stores charging customers 3 percent to use a credit card—but at far higher rates and with even less transparency. If NDC was about better retailing and customer experience, why impose surcharges at all?  The answer is simple: Fees are the clearest evidence yet that NDC has become a tool to drive direct bookings, offset distribution costs and create new revenue streams—rather than deliver innovation or value to the end customer.  This shift is underscored by a renewed airline push for direct connect APIs – just as NDC adoption accelerates.

Profit Over Progress

Last year, the movie Fly Me to the Moon questioned whether Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moonwalk was an elaborate ruse. Of course it wasn’t, but the same can’t be said of NDC. Many now wonder whether the original promise of NDC was genuine. If it had been, airlines would have prioritized interoperability, seamless servicing and standardized processes. Instead, we’ve seen a strategy designed to maximize airline revenue while pushing costs onto GDSs, agencies and corporate buyers—with no clear industry-wide governance, no unified technical standard, and no shared strategic goal.

Past Lessons, Future Solutions

New M.O. supports innovation like NDC, but it must be done in the right way and benefit the customer. To be clear, NDC is still achievable, but only with a collaborative, transparent, travel-focused approach. Delta has consistently prioritized the needs of both customers and partners in its distribution approach, for example. The industry needs more of this. Here’s a roadmap: 

Partnership – Airlines working collaboratively with agencies, GDSs, OBTs and other technology companies so we can move forward faster. American Airlines’ renewed engagement with partners to accelerate NDC adoption is a recent improvement.

True Interoperability – Seamless servicing capabilities that match, if not exceed, current EDIFACT-based solutions. 

Shared Investment – Airlines must take some of the financial responsibility for the costs imposed on their distribution partners. 

Corporate Buyer Involvement – Managed travel programs need a real seat at the table, ensuring NDC delivers value beyond just airline profits. 

If airlines continue to push NDC as a zero-sum game, where their gains come at the direct expense of GDSs, agencies and buyers, the road ahead will remain turbulent. If they take a lesson from JFK, embracing a shared vision with shared responsibility, NDC can still fulfil its original promise. 

Right now, it’s not a moonshot. It’s a mission stalled by self-interest and a refusal to fly together.