Delta, United, British Airways, Finnair and LATAM have
joined NDC Exchange, a marketplace for airline product sales that is supported
by IATA's New Distribution Capability (NDC).
Those carriers will join Air Canada, which became the first
airline on the exchange in August. Established a year ago by aviation IT firm SITA and by ATPCO, the airline-owned corporation that collects and
distributes fare data, NDC Exchange is a marketplace that centralizes direct
connections between airlines and travel agencies. As such it spares travel
agencies the expense of developing direct connections for each airline they
wish to work with outside the GDS channel.
The marketplace is especially useful for the purchase of
ancillary products, such as bag fees and bundled fares, which still remain
largely unavailable through the GDSs.
It also enables the cross-selling of ancillary services
between airlines in cases when a traveler will fly on more than one carrier.