"Facilitated booking" on metasearch engines is nothing new - but British Airways is making a fairly big thing of talking about a deal with Kayak that uses the IATA NDC standard.
The collaboration between the pair, launched this week, sees the airline's usual fares, schedules and availability integrated into Kayak but with the ability for users to complete their booking on the travel search site.
BA says the deal has only been made possible by using the technology developed on top of the NDC standard being overseen by IATA.
In particular, customers will be able to pay for their preferred seat on a flight via Priceline Group-owned Kayak - the first time such functionality has been available to a third party website, rather solely on BA's own online offering.
Similar functionality for facilitated booking was trialled by BA with Skyscanner last year, again using NDC, including as-yet unavailable plans to include seat selection.
BA is well-known in distribution circles as being one of the main cheerleaders behind NDC, so it is no surprise to hear it talking about how the standard is "addressing the industry's current distribution limitations around product differentiation".
The airline's head of distribution, Ian Luck, adds:
"With every new adoption of NDC we see more elements launching - in Kayak's case, the ability to book and pay for preferred seating and guarantee customers the seat they want."
The Kayak agreement is part of what BA calls "a great impetus" surrounding the NDC project, with Lock believing there is a "real interest and engagement from the travel industry".
"It’s a great way to bring our products and services to life.
"It demonstrates the real value that British Airways offers, including all of the elements that go into the fare, enabling them to manage bookings in a way that was previously only available on BA.com.”
The new tool is available on mobile and desktop in Germany, Switzerland, France and in the US, and mobile-only in the UK.
Kayak says it has "multiple airlines" working with it on facilitated bookings on-site, with it continuing to test and optimise with other carriers.
Here is a screenshot of the NDC-enabled facilitated booking path: