IATA new director general Alexandre de Juniac has committed to actively push the New Distribution Capability programme.

“It an enormous change in the way we distribute, in the way airlines interact with their customers… in our business and in every business, changing the distribution channel is not a small problem, so it can explain why it took time,” he told reporters in Singapore, at his first media interview since taking office on 1 September.

He added: "My plan is to push it actively."

Putting on his former cap as chief of Air France-KLM, de Juniac said that the NDC will however allow airlines to regain control of their customer base. If they use the knowledge cleverly, airlines will also be rewarded with greater access to their customers.

IATA says that 23 airlines have since adopted all or part of the NDC standards, while 86 others have said that they intend to do so.

The NDC is one of former chief Tony Tyler’s key achievements during his five-year term. He admitted, however, that he would have liked to see faster progress on the project.

The NDC is an IATA initiative to develop a standard that would allow airlines to more efficiently communicate with organisations such as travel agents and aggregators, that sell and distribute their products and services.

Source: Cirium Dashboard