Airline industry group IATA is plowing ahead with its New Distribution Capability (NDC), an open Internet database exchange standard, including releasing screenshots of what a desktop interface based on the system might appear to travel agents (see below).
IATA says that in May it had a kick-off meeting of the first pilot.
IATA declined to say which industry stakeholders (airline, agency, IT provider) are participating in the pilot, though it says 18 entities have expressed serious interest.
IATA's NDC specialist Yanik Hoyles expects first outcomes to be presented in October at the World Passenger Symposium in Dublin. But don't expect to see a demonstration of a user interface then. The discussion of progress and findings will remain high-level.
IATA would like to launch one or two additional pilots by December -- a lower number than the originally discussed five pilots.
Hoyles says there's a five-year road map to hone a working NDC-based system and make it readily available in the market.
Analysts say much depends on how quickly it is embraced by IT partners, such as global distribution systems (GDSs) like Amadeus and independent technology companies like Farelogix.
There isn't a hard date for a functional system, though IATA officials suspect that a system working "live in the wild" and processing real-world transactions wouldn't be ready until after 2015. Even five years into the road map, there will be some industry players still using the current EDIFACT programming standard.
Desktop simulation
Since Sunday, IATA has been showing off an NDC demonstrator at its IATA ATG event in Cape Town.
Hoyles is at pains to piont out that IATA is not building a desktop solution. All the group has done is create a simulation of what an IT provider might build using the NDC industry standard that IATA is promoting.
To illustrate how an IT provider might exploit the benefits of NDC, IATA mocked up one for online travel agency (OTA) style bookings, and one for travel management companies (TMCs).
Though only two examples are used, other types of stakeholders, such as leisure travel agents, would have their own NDC-based systems, too.
The OTA-style model of NDC
In its simulation, you have schedule and price but also icons that are in effect a combination of product descriptions, ancillaries or options, says Hoyles.
Thanks to the XML programming language, which is more flexible than the current EDIFACT standard, you can push through richer content.
NDC-enabled and non-NDC-enabled airlines could appear side-by-side, though the rich information would only be on the NDC-enabled airline results.
Examples of ancillaries would be listed for the customer in a drop-down menu, simulated here:
Anything that impacts the total price could be displayed up-front, such as the effect of the payment method.
For example, if a customer pays with a particular credit card, related fees or benefits associated with using that card could be reflected in the prices quoted, such as free checked bags.
In the demonstration of the NDC, IATA was eager to emphasize that all of that rich content was available without telling the system the customer's information.
The NDC doesn't boil down to being social, and early versions are unlikely to have some kind of Facebook Connect function, says IATA.
But if the customer did want to share her frequent flier number or preferred payment method with the airline, and if the system was in compliance with local regulations, then it would be possible to provide the more comprehensive results.
The passenger could decide which airlines could receive her personal information, according to IATA. In its illustration, a hypothetical passenger could volunteer which airline would receive her frequent flier details to imaginary airlines like Athena Air.
The TMC version of NDC
For travel management companies, the interface works much the same. One benefit of NDC would be that the TMC would have live information to create an easy itinerary printable or emailable for customer.
This is the old style itinerary, which will be familiar to many readers.
This is a simulation of an NDC-enabled style itinerary.
IATA says that a user could automatically sort search results according to the preferences voluntarily shared by the passenger.
For instance, if Wi-Fi were a preference, and the passenger had shared that information in their profile, and the passenger had logged in to the system and voluntarily agreed to share that WiFi preference with the system, then the search results would be based on that information.
Flight results would be filter so that only flights with WiFi would appear.
For further insights on NDC around the Web:
IT provider Farelogix has put together a more sophisticated-looking, though un-official, selection of screenshots of what NDC-style flight booking might look like for agents.
Elsewhere, read this insightful take on IATA's NDC written from a hotelier's perspective, by industry analyst Robert Cole.
On June 2, IATA published a video version of how the NDC might function, too: