LONDON: British Airways and Iberia have yesterday announced that both airlines have achieved the International Air Transport Association (IATA) NDC Certification NDC@Scale status. This is another significant step made by both airlines, demonstrating their commitment to, and continuous investment in, improving and enhancing NDC capabilities for their customers.
NDC Certification NDC@Scale status is the highest certification level that IATA provides to airlines on the NDC standard; a set of criteria that demonstrates that both airlines have the capabilities to drive volumes of NDC transactions, enable enhanced servicing and support customers effectively.
Coinciding with this achievement and an ever-increasing number of NDC connections, with over 4,000 agencies now connected to NDC, British Airways and Iberia continue to enable NDC exclusive content. This includes a further rollout of the airlines’ Long Haul Additional Price Points (LHAPP) propositions, expanding them across a larger number of routes, including North America. This means partners on NDC will enjoy up to three times more price points than via legacy distribution standard. Both airlines intend to complete the expansion to all routes in 2020.
Additionally, Iberia has started to offer its Basic fares only through NDC solutions, on selected domestic routes. British Airways will follow on European routes in Q1 2020.
NDC facilitates access to a richer and more complete inventory from the airlines as well as access to the wider range of services they offer, than was possible through legacy systems. To get these benefits, travel agencies can connect directly to British Airways and Iberia’s NDC APIs, use an increasing number of aggregator solutions or book through the booking portal provided by IAG.
Ian Luck, British Airways’ Head of Distribution, said: “This certification is testament to the work we have put in improving our distribution offering for customers. With exclusive content and a whole extra range of services available through an NDC connection, we’d encourage agents to consider how we can work with them to meet their needs through our NDC offering.”
Cliff Trotta, Iberia’s Head of Commercial Distribution and Planning, said: “Our IATA Level 4 certification last month was all about Servicing. NDC@Scale is way more than our ability to exchange messages. Scalability is key to driving adoption and with this certification label we certify the robustness of our NDC usage, with millions of shopping requests per day, as well as our 24/7 support for agencies that have embarked on this journey to true retailing. It makes sense to invest in NDC and we are committed to move faster on this.” BIZ TODAY MONITOR
