American Airlines has alerted travel agencies that they need to be connected to the carrier's New Distribution Capability (NDC) technology by April 2023 to ensure access to its full range of content from third parties.
The message from the US carrier was contained within a memo reviewed by BTN. A similar memo was to be sent to corporate customers.
Without this NDC connection, American estimates that agencies will lose access to “over 40 per cent of fares available today via third-party legacy technology channels”.
The notice comes about six weeks after American announced it had signed new agreements with the three largest global distribution systems - Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport - to expand the carrier's NDC content.
At that time, Amadeus and Travelport already provided American's NDC-enabled content, with Sabre set to be ready "in early 2023".
American’s managing director of airline retailing Neil Geurin told BTN: “The conversation [with agencies] has been ongoing for a very long time.
“Most of the [travel management companies] that we talk to have access to NDC content for some carriers, so they've already figured out a way to connect to this.
“One thing we've done a little bit differently than everyone else is we waited until we were in the GDSs with NDC to launch this process, which greatly simplifies the connection.”
In addition, through an NDC connection, travellers will have access to ”enriched content with more descriptive information”, a seat map at the time of shopping, all available enhanced third-party public channel content including enhanced offers, ancillary products and the carrier's lowest fares, as well as enhanced functionalities and servicing features.
American’s SVP and chief customer officer Alison Taylor added: "We've talked a lot about this journey and it's just another step.
“While they may not know the 40 per cent [figure] yet, they may not be surprised. Most of them are already ready or will be ready. We're here to help people get ready, and we've reallocated some resources to be dedicated around NDC as well, to help the customer through this."
When asked about fees, Geurin said American would have neither surcharges nor a penalty for not being NDC-connected, other than not being able to access all of the carrier's available content.
Geurin added that around 29 per cent of its agency business was currently going through NDC, which was likely to reach one-third by the end of the year.