With airline revenues decimated by the Covid-19 pandemic, it would seem that investment in rolling out IATA's New Distribution Capability (NDC) has come to a standstill.
A Sabre executive recently said that "the vast majority of airlines have paused or completely stopped their NDC activity".
Certainly, there has seemed to be little public activity around NDC. But is that really the case? Has Covid derailed NDC or has it spurred airlines and intermediaries into working harder behind the scenes to make it a reality?
IATA recently held its Business Travel summit and NDC developments mentioned there show that things have moved apace. Many airlines have also announced new NDC-powered initiatives.
On the latest episode of the Week in Review podcast, regular host Mark Frary is joined by Claudia Adams of Allianz , Lydie Charpin of Amadeus, Aman Pourkarimi of Gray Dawes Group and Paul Tilstone of Festive Road.
They discuss GDS strategies around NDC, the version 21.3 standard coming in September and whether corporates really are seeing the benefits.