Any content, any time, anywhere

Late last year, American Airlines announced the shift of some of its content from traditional distribution channels to its NDC connections, starting in April, 2023. At Travelport, our number one commitment has always been to make sure our customers have access to all the content they need – regardless of airline, channel, or technology. In short, our philosophy is that if our agency partners need content, we provide it in a scalable, seamless, and serviceable manner.

Today we’re pleased to announce that American Airlines NDC content is available to all Travelport customers ahead of American Airlines planned changeover date and ahead of our original planned go live date.

We were one of the first to market with American Airlines NDC content in Travelport+, covering not only booking, but end-to-end servicing including cancellations and modifications too. And for those customers on other Travelport platforms, we’re live with shop, price and book, with modifications coming in Mid-April. To make a modification prior to that time, you must contact American Sales Support directly. However, keep in mind that American’s Basic Economy fares are ineligible for ticket changes anyway and we’re aiming to have modifications live in Mid-April. We will update you as the ability to modify American NDC bookings becomes available.

Soon we’ll be bringing United Airlines NDC content to Travelport-connected agencies in the same manner. Customers are already testing United’s NDC content on our platforms today, and the capability will roll out to customers not yet upgraded to Travelport+ over the coming weeks.

Our commitment remains to be “any content, any time, anywhere.” Unlike our competitors, we’re focused on enabling great NDC for travel agents, not just suppliers. And our solution for NDC addresses everything – not only booking, but end-to-end servicing including cancellations and modifications, too. All this helps give our agents and their travelers the easier modern retailing experience they expect.

Travelport+ continues to be our focus, as our retailing platform delivering modern retailing for travel sellers everywhere. It is based on a fully modern microservices architecture, is cloud-first, and contains many of the features the modern travel agent values (features such as automated exchanges, advanced configurable flight search, and highly scalable order management). But we always recognized that some of our customers would not be fully deployed on the new platform in early 2023, and that critical content would also need to be accessible through each of our platforms.

We remain a strong partner with both American and United for their distribution of content and will continue to provide our agency customers with access to the best content and the best end-to-end customer experience. In fact, we were the first to launch American’s NDC content on Travelport+ back in Q2 2022, and our NDC development with United is in testing and nearing completion.

Dave Bartels, Vice President of Pricing and Revenue Management at United Airlines, shares, “United is excited to be working together with Travelport on our NDC initiative to provide tailored content to our customers through the Travelport subscriber network, which will allow customers to better customize their travel with different amenities and experiences.”

Scott Laurence, Senior Vice President of Partnership Strategy at American Airlines, added, “Travelport has been an agile partner and was out in front in their release of American’s NDC content via Travelport+, a key part of our distribution strategy. Enabling American’s NDC across all platforms is another testimony to the partnership that we have enjoyed.”

Continue to stay tuned to this channel for more updates in the coming weeks.