New Distribution Capability (NDC) represents a major step forward, particularly for next-gen revenue management, enabling airlines to offer more personalized and dynamic offers to customers and optimize pricing and inventory in real time. The ultimate goal is to provide the right products at the right time—a promising and transformative vision that the industry is eagerly working towards.
NDC traces its roots back to 2012 when the International Air Transport Association (IATA) first introduced the concept as a response to the evolving needs of both airlines and passengers. The underlying motivation for NDC was to address the limitations of the “indirect” booking flow, in which GDSs were responsible for building offers from various pieces of flight content, including availability from an airline's Computer Reservation System (CRS), rates from air price repository ATPCO, and schedules from third-party databases like ours at OAG.
As illustrated by Altexsoft, the NDC approach was meant to empower airlines to regain control over their products, creating dynamic packages of ancillaries, and enabling them to adjust offers based on current market demand and customer preferences, rather than relying solely on the capabilities and limitations of GDSs.
The airlines to first adopt NDC were Lufthansa, British Airways, American Airlines, and Iberia. The initiative aimed to address the limitations of legacy distribution systems and enable more effective communication between airlines, travel agencies, and consumers.
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