American Airlines, American Express Global Business Travel
and Amadeus have begun jointly processing live New Distribution Capability-enabled
bookings.
Under the collaboration, Amex GBT is leveraging the new
Amadeus Travel solution to make bookings of American Airlines' NDC content.
"This is an important step forward for airline
retailing as three industry leaders demonstrate how collaboration is key to
creating value and choice," the companies said in an announcement Sunday
that was timed to coincide with the annual Global Business Travel Association conference
in Chicago. "American will look to gain full benefit of the Amadeus Travel
Platform through which travel companies like American Express GBT can provide
access to the world's most comprehensive and robust travel content."
The companies said that once capabilities reach scalable
production levels, the goal of the collaboration is to offer end-to-end
bookings flow and servicing, including cancellations, exchanges and ancillary
product sales.
NDC is a set of XML standards developed by IATA to enable
the sale of airline ancillary products through intermediaries. For American,
this new NDC ramp-up follows an announcement in June that it had launched a
pilot program to test the functionality of selling corporate bundles via
connections supported by NDC.
In May, Amadeus said it was producing approximately 10,000
NDC-enabled booking per month in partnership with online travel company Travix.