Making The Connection

In this week’s issue of Canadian Travel Press, Montreal editor, Mike Dunbar reports that Air Canada is to be one of the front-running airlines in an upcoming live test of the IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) initiative being piloted by US travel distribution specialist JR Technologies.

The new initiative, which involves live implementation of an NDC Aggregator platform, was announced at the recent IATA AGM in Doha.

“We want to help all the players in the airline distribution value chain to wrap their arms around NDC,” explained JRT president George Khairallah, who added, “We hope they will all benefit from this exercise.”

The live test is just one of a series of six pilot program currently running around the world, prompting IATA director General Tony Tyler to comment, “They will support the development of the NDC standard to modernise the way that airline products are presented through travel agents and help to promote efficiency and innovation.”

Now that IATA has received tentative approval of its NDC Resolution 787 from the US Department of Transportation, association officials are expecting full implementation in 2016, only three years after development work started.

For the full story in this week’s digital edition of Canadian Travel Press, click here.