United Airlines has become the third carrier to offer New Distribution Capability content though Concur Travel, joining British Airways and Lufthansa, both of which began offering NDC bookings via Concur's OBT in 2019. Like those carriers, United's NDC bookings flow through Concur Travel's Select Access feature, which offers direct bookings with low-cost carriers and access to other non-global distribution system content through a partnership with aggregator TravelFusion.
United's NDC content is available as of this week to all Concur customers, with United's NDC APIs displaying configurable bundles of ancillary services within Concur Travel, according to Concur.
In a statement, Concur SVP of global supplier and content strategy Charlie Sultan applauded recent industrywide progress in expanding the amount of NDC content available through GDSs, travel management companies and other channels since Concur's BA and Lufthansa NDC integrations more than a year and a half ago.
However, "There is just a lot more that still needs to be done," Sultan said—noting that Concur "plans to obtain NDC content via the GDSs when [the company] believes that a robust, scalable and commercially transparent solution is available."
In the meantime, Concur "continues to engage with the GDSs and airlines to understand their solutions and progress with the intention to support the necessary changes," when the time comes, according to Sultan. Concur also is continuing to pilot connectivity with American Airlines NDC content, an effort that dates back at least to the BA and Lufthansa integrations in September 2019, Sultan noted.
Concur and United have some history when it comes to multi-channel distribution; In January 2017 United became the first airline to connect its content to Concur's TripLink direct booking capture tool.