British Airways’ decision to retire its in-house-developed NDC platform in favour of Amadeus’ Altéa NDC solution has seen experts debating about the airline industry’s original ambitions for NDC, with some arguing that it highlights the challenges airlines have faced in delivering on those goals.
On June 25, BA’s Head of Indirect Platforms, Louise Baxendale, announced that after more than a decade of investment in NDC, BA would migrate from its in-house 17.2 NDC programme to Amadeus Altéa on the IATA Standard 21.3.
“Altéa gives us a stable and consistent platform, built on a standard that is already widely used across the industry - making it easier for our partners to manage their connections. It will also provide greater reliability and resilience today and a clearer path to future capabilities leveraging the Amadeus roadmap,” said Baxendale.
“By partnering with Amadeus for NDC, BA benefits from a more standardised environment, making it easier to integrate new partners and accelerate adoption across our distribution ecosystem.”
However, distribution technology specialists told Travel News that BA’s decision is a sign of the broader airline industry’s struggle to implement their original concept of NDC.
“The original intent of NDC was to free airlines and make them less dependent on GDSs and the passenger service systems (PSSs) that they provide,” said Ann Cederhall, Travel Technology Specialist at LeapShift. “So, BA’s move to Amadeus literally implies that they are back to square one, which means that they have achieved nothing in over nine years, using over 20 developers.”
According to Riaan van Schoor, CEO of Agentivity, airlines came to view NDC as the primary solution for modern retailing when, in reality, “NDC is a very small and messy block of the many components airlines need to be a modern retailer.”
He believes BA ultimately decided it was more practical to outsource the technical delivery of NDC so it could focus on its core business.
“However, it is a concern that this move adds to Amadeus's already dominant position, and we should be careful of that as an industry,” said van Schoor.
GDS dominance persists
Although one of NDC's original objectives was to reduce airlines' reliance on GDSs, experts noted that many carriers continue to depend on them to distribute NDC content effectively.
“In this sense, they are also going back to square one. BA is now putting all their eggs in the Amadeus basket, enabling Amadeus to, yet again, control all its distribution and now its NDC,” said Cederhall.
Van Schoor explained that as airlines began adopting NDC, the GDSs adapted by incorporating NDC content into their own distribution platforms.
Amadeus archives revealed that the GDS was initially IATA certified as an NDC IT provider, helping airlines build their own APIs back in 2016, before it became one of the first providers to achieve dual IATA Level 3 NDC certification as an aggregator in 2018.
“GDS aggregation of NDC is a direct result of airline adoption of NDC, but an airline beholden to a GDS for its distribution dreams is a failed airline,” said van Schoor.
Servicing improvements
One of the biggest criticisms of NDC by travel agents has been its lack of servicing capabilities.
“Very few travel suppliers understand the needs of B2B, especially corporate travel-specific requirements and it's not limited to airlines. Servicing is one part but how orders are made, what reporting fields businesses want and simple items like access to ticket coupons, which are very limited within NDC, are just a few of the very misunderstood items,” said van Schoor.
Cederhall explained that servicing capabilities were only introduced in IATA’s NDC Standard 21.
“About 70% of the world's airlines are still using NDC version 2017, from standard 17.1, but this does not support any changes. You cannot change a ticket, nor process any ticket refunds on this version,” she said.
“It was not until 2021, with Standard 21, that we saw these types of changes being supported by NDC.”
She added that while servicing has improved significantly, many airlines have yet to migrate to the latest versions of the standard.
"There are many airlines that are behind, but many of them also know that they can't sell a product that they can't service," she said.
Alternative approaches
The experts said more airlines are exploring alternatives to traditional NDC implementations.
“I see more airlines realising there are alternatives to NDC. They are also realising that with the speed at which AI, Model Context Protocol (MCP) and related technology are advancing, when compared to NDC, data normalisation and translation is easier to achieve than ever before,” said van Schoor.
While traditional APIs generally require custom integrations, MCP is designed to enable AI systems to interact more dynamically with external data and services.
“All airlines really need nowadays is their own API with an implemented MCP layer so that their data can interact with any other API. There are many airlines who are now looking at solutions like this because it’s easier and less expensive,” said Cederhall.
“There are airlines who understand what alternatives there are and, so, at the end of the day, NDC will matter less and less.”
