Airlines will face growing risks of drone and cyber attacks as aviation security evolves beyond traditional threats such as bombs being smuggled onto planes, Europe’s top transport official has warned during a visit to Australia.

Henrik Hololei, the European Commission’s director-general for mobility and transport, said in Canberra after meeting with Australian security officials that terrorists would always treat aeroplanes as attention-grabbing targets but would evolve their tactics.

“We have to be always one step ahead … The situation is never static. It is always dynamic and that also means we have to deal with new threats,” Mr Hololei said.

“When we look at the future, we obviously have to be ready for the threat which also involves the drones. We have to be ready for the threats which also involve the cyber attacks, which have become the norm on the global scale,” he said.

He said homemade bombs, chemicals and powders were “already history”. The future risks included crashing drones into planes and hacking aviation systems to cause accidents or disruption.

On Monday night, the river of air 35,000 feet above the New York City area, known as the jet stream, clocked in at a blazing 231 mph. This is the fastest jet stream on record since 1957 for the National Weather Service in Upton, New York — breaking the old record of 223 mph, according to NWS forecaster Carlie Buccola.

This wind provided a turbo boost to commercial passenger planes along for the ride. With the help of this rapid tailwind, Virgin Atlantic Flight 8 from Los Angeles to London hit what could be a record high speed for a Boeing 787: 801 mph over Pennsylvania at 9:20 p.m. Monday night.

“Wow, that’s fast,” a Boeing spokesman told CBS News via email. But it’s not something the plane manufacturer tracks, so they can’t confirm if 801 mph is a record.

“The typical cruising speed of the Dreamliner is 561 mph,” CBS News transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave points out. “The past record for the 787 is 776 mph set in January 2017 by a Norwegian 787-9 flying from JFK to London Gatwick. That flight set a record for the fastest subsonic transatlantic commercial airline flight — 5 hours and 13 minutes, thanks to a 202 mph tailwind.”

For reference, the speed of sound is 760 mph; but the plane did not break the sound barrier. That’s because part of the plane’s speed is attributed to the swiftly moving 200 mph+ air surrounding the plane. So relative to the air around it, the plane’s speed falls far short.

Jet streams like the one Monday can have a big impact on flights.

“A 100 mph increase in the jet stream above typical can add or remove about an hour from a five to six hour flight,” according to a spokesperson from FlightAware, a global aviation software and data services company based in Houston.

While you might be pleasantly surprised by an early arrival going eastbound, you’re likely to face delays westbound battling the powerful headwind. While winds of this magnitude do affect air travel, FlightAware said changes in the upper level winds are accounted for.

“The estimated jet stream winds are accounted for in flight planning, and even before that in scheduling you’ll see longer block times westbound than eastbound,” FlightAware points out.

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In the interactive map above, created by Cameron Beccario, the jet stream intensity can be viewed (updated every three hours).

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What’s causing the record jet stream?

The record jet stream winds were not only confined to the New York City area, it was a common theme all over the Northeast because of a unique confluence of events.

It all started in the Pacific Ocean: Just last week NOAA declared an official El Niño in the tropical Pacific Ocean. El Niño is a warming of the equatorial sea surface temperatures which can have repercussions thousands of miles away. It is partly responsible for the recent wicked weather in California last week.

“The last couple weeks the atmosphere has been in a much more El Niño-like state because it’s teaming up with another natural climate phenomena known as the MJO,” said Dr. Adam Sobel, professor of applied physics at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The MJO is associated with clusters of thunderstorms and bursts of westerly winds.”

As a result of this energetic mix, twin cyclones have formed in the central Pacific and all this activity is spawning an unusually powerful sub-tropical jet stream across Mexico and into the southern U.S.

At the same time, a vigorous polar jet stream in Alaska is splitting into two branches along the Pacific Coast. One is heading east through the Great Lakes, while the other heads south into California and then turns east into the Ohio Valley.

The end result is all three jet streams — along with an assist from the polar vortex — are now merging in the Northeast. This is boosting an otherwise strong jet stream, into a record breaking one.

The confluence of events is much more easily understood by looking at the following illustration:

The moist and energetic jet stream will remain in place through the weekend. As a result, dangerous flooding is possible across parts of the Mississippi and Tennessee Valley with a widespread 5-10 inches of rain possible in some areas.

Flight delays, cancellations, and other passenger complaints have been the inescapable flipside of India’s soaring air passenger traffic. But a regulatory policy that is too sympathetic to passenger grievances always carries the risks of hurting the bottom lines of India’s embattled aviation industry.

Hence the ministry of civil aviation’s February 27 “passenger charter” appears to be a balancing act between the two.

In drafting the charter, the government has been careful to heed some of the concerns of airlines.

Take the case of ticket cancellations. The draft rules released last May had proposed that passengers should get a full refund if they cancel a ticket. But the final rules say the passenger is not eligible for this if the cancellation happens within a week of the flight’s departure.

This assumes added importance given the spate of flight cancellations in India recently. “Be it [due to] engine trouble, pilot shortages with GoAir and IndiGo, or [problems at] Jet Airways, a lot of cancellations have been happening across airlines,” says Ashish Nainan, an aviation analyst with the ratings agency CARE.

Data from India’s civil aviation regulator, the directorate general of civil aviation, confirms this trend.

While the charter has given airlines some leeway with cancellation charges, it is more stringent on practices like overbooking.

Expecting a few passengers to not show up, many airlines tend to overbook flights by 2%-3% of their total capacity, explains Nainan. If the extra passengers cannot be accommodated on the booked flight, they are usually allotted another flight. The passenger charter guarantees compensation to travellers if the rescheduling delays their journey by over an hour.

Overbooking is now likely to become less common, impacting airlines’ revenues, Nainan added. This may compound the woes of the industry, already battered by rising fuel prices, a depreciating rupee, and intense competition that has kept fares at rock bottom levels.

Enforceability?

But rules, of course, run the risk of being futile if they can’t be enforced. And that will be a key concern going forward, admitted Mark Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Consulting.

According to the charter, a passenger not satisfied with an airline’s response to her grievance can escalate the complaint on the government’s AirSewa app. This provision, Martin said, is insufficient. “We are one of the largest aviation markets in the world and yet we don’t have a court dedicated to aviation disputes,” he said.

While the rules, in many cases, allow for compensation claims, they don’t go very far in providing stranded passengers with remedies, Martin added.

This article first appeared on Quartz.

The commercial success that Airbnb has garnered in the last ten years is undisputed. Not content with just becoming the market leader in short-term home rentals, the company has since gone on to offer its users travel advice, in-depth guides based on local knowledge, and personalised experiences lead by local hosts to further foster its tightly knit and ever growing community.

Speaking at Brainstorm Design this week, Airbnb’s director of transportation Jenny Arden emphasised that Airbnb’s approach was still very much rooted in design. ‘My role at Airbnb has been a design role. I’ve been a design director and so I’ve had the responsibility of representing the users – that’s the ultimate job to represent that voice and make sure that the customer has not been forgotten in the strategy, the planning and development. My transition is now into a business role [and covers things] you wouldn’t normally put the designer responsible for.’

She continues, ‘The reason we are doing this, is that we believe that first and foremost, as a business, we design the products that people need, that they want. Then from there, a strategy unfolds and you start to discover. A lot of what I do is similar to a start-up. I act as an entrepreneur and founder – there is no job too small.’

In her current role, Arden plays a galvanising force in shaping Airbnb’s latest ambition: to revolutionise the air travel and transportation aspects of travelling, as was revealed publicly last month. Building on the company’s aspirations to become a one-stop shop for all aspects of the travel experience, the company has also recently hired Fred Reid, formerly the CEO and founder of Virgin America, to serve as its global head of transportation.

While the exact focus on what transportation may entail for the company is still being kept under wraps, Arden states, ‘Our mission at Airbnb is to provide a world where anyone can belong anywhere. This really means you can travel to a community you’ve never seen before and feel like you’re a welcome member there, even if it’s just temporarily. My hope is that all that mission and vision can be achieved in all stages of the trip. There should be no lack of thought that went into the end-to-end experience.’ Watch this space. §

How rapidly are drones proliferating?

There are now 1.3 million drones registered with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), up from about 470,000 in 2016 when drone registration was first required. The FAA has projected that the small model hobbyist UAS fleet in the United States will “more than double from an estimated 1.1 million vehicles in 2017 to 2.4 million units by 2022” and “the number of remote pilots is set to increase from 73,673 in 2017 to 301,000 in 2022.”

Dr. Kristy Kiernan. Photo: Embry-Riddle/Daryl LaBello

Do we know how many drones are actually flying over airports?

My colleagues and I studied drone flights over a 13-day period around Daytona Beach International Airport. During that time, we detected 73 different drones that made 192 separate flights. Some 7 percent of those drone flights exceeded 400 feet, and 21 percent exceeded the recommended maximum altitude for the area where they were operating. In one case, a drone was detected at an altitude of 90 feet within a quarter mile of the approach path to an active runway. In total, eight drones were detected within one mile of the center of the airport. That may not sound like a lot of drones, but there were 11,500 aircraft takeoffs and landings at that airport – many opportunities for conflicts.

For those unfamiliar with the regulations, why is that concerning?

Remote pilots are required to keep their drones in sight, below 400 feet, and out of airspace meant for passenger-carrying aircraft.  Anytime you see drones flying outside those parameters without permission, it’s a cause for concern.

Are both hobbyists and commercial drone pilots required to take a test?

No. Commercial drone pilots must pass an FAA test, but there is currently no test for recreational drone pilots. The FAA, the AMA and many companies have tried to ensure hobbyist drone pilots know the rules, but that doesn’t guarantee that everyone will follow them.

Does technology offer any solutions?

Some companies are using software solutions to keep drones away from the areas where they don’t belong. DJI and other companies use “geofences,” which alert pilots if their drones enter off-limits areas. Some geofences prevent drones from flying at all. But geofences don’t always correspond to the airspace the FAA wants to protect, and users may be able to override them.

Some people think the risk of drones and airplanes colliding is overblown. Why?

There have been cases in which objects reported as drones turned out to be something else. It’s pretty difficult to distinguish a drone when you’re flying in a manned aircraft. Actually, it’s pretty difficult to see a drone at all. An Oklahoma State University study found that when pilots of small aircraft looked for drones, they were only able to detect them when they were a tenth of a mile away, on average. To me, this should be cause for greater concern. Maybe it’s what pilots are not seeing that should worry us.

What does the future hold, in terms of innovation to keep drones and airplanes apart?

This is a really vibrant area of research and development, and I think we’ll see a lot of change in the next few years, in terms of education, regulation, and technology.  Eventually, some form of identification and tracking will be required for all drones, but it will have to be a different system from what aircraft use now, or we risk overwhelming pilots and air traffic controllers with information and clutter.

If a drone did strike an aircraft, what would happen?

Damage from a collision depends upon many variables, including the mass of the object being hit and the impact velocity, the density of the object, the angle of impact, and the frangibility of the object, or how easily it breaks up. Already, transport aircraft have to be able to withstand impacts of birds weighing 4-8 pounds on the airframe at cruising speed, and ingested into the engine at takeoff power. Most popular consumer drones weigh less than that. On the other hand, a series of studies performed at Virginia Tech suggest that the concentrated mass of drones compared to birds makes impact with a drone more damaging than that with a bird of a similar weight. The best option would be to avoid hitting a drone at all.

We’ve been talking about accidental collisions. What about deliberate acts?

That’s a whole other story. A number of solutions are being investigated to prevent drone attacks on airports. When two industrial-sized drones were spotted over London’s Gatwick Airport, bringing air travel to a halt last December, British authorities are thought to have used an Israeli-developed system called Drone Dome to detect the drones. That system uses radar and a laser range finder to spot drones up to 6 miles away and then jam communication between the drone and its operator. At Embry-Riddle, researchers have been working on a “Drone Net” that might someday offer a cost-effective way to protect small airports, university and corporate campuses, and farms from irresponsible drone operators. That technology is based on a network of passive rooftop sensors that continuously scan the sky. That can be a more affordable option than an active sensor like a radar.

How can we reduce the risks that drones pose to air travel?

We need more data. We need to know where drones are operating, how they are being used, where the threats are, and how bad it is when you hit them. Only with more information can we really understand the threat from drones encountering aircraft.

After U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., unveiled the Green New Deal, Republican critics said it would eventually ground air travel.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., outlined his opposition to the Democrats’ Green New Deal in a Feb. 25 Orlando Sentinel op-ed:

“If you are not familiar with it, here’s the cliff notes version: It calls for rebuilding or retrofitting every building in America in the next 10 years, eliminating all fossil fuels in 10 years, eliminating nuclear power, and working towards ending air travel (to be replaced with high-speed rail).”

Scott described mayhem if a Democrat wins the presidency; some 2020 presidential candidates are co-sponsors of the Green New Deal.

“What then? Tear down all buildings, eliminate oil and gas, and stop air travel?”

Let’s hit the brakes right there — do the Democrats want to end air travel?

We found that Scott is ignoring the actual text of the resolution. The resolution does not ground airplanes, either now or in the future. And climate advocates told us the elimination of air travel isn’t a practical goal.

The “Green New Deal” resolution was introduced by Ocasio-Cortez on Feb. 7 and has 89 Democratic co-sponsors.

A companion measure in the Senate, introduced by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., has nearly a dozen sponsors — all Democrats — including presidential candidates Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Broadly, these resolutions address ways to curb climate change and protect the environment. Even if it were to pass both chambers, the resolution would be nonbinding.

So what does the House resolution say about air travel? In a word, nothing. It makes no mention of airplanes at all. It does call for “overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible,” which includes “investment in high-speed rail.”

We reached out to Scott’s press office and did not hear back by deadline, but the senator was probably referring to some supporting documents released by Ocasio-Cortez’s staff.

A frequently asked questions document mentioned airplanes twice, stating “we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”

The FAQ also called for the United States to “totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle.”

(For the record, according to the UC Santa Barbara ScienceLine, “cows do contribute to global warming, although in fact they mostly do so by burping rather than farting.”)

As soon as the FAQ became public, the idea that the Democrats wanted to make air travel obsolete was picked up by Fox News and some Republican politicians, including President Donald Trump.

Ocasio-Cortez’s press office did not reply for this fact-check, but her chief of staff previously said that there were many shared documents among various interest groups, and that the release of this particular document was a mistake.

Experts on climate change say it’s important to focus on the language in the actual resolution and not the FAQ, which carries no weight.

“It seems to me those lines from the FAQ were lighthearted and ill-considered, and it’s not clear why they were posted,” said Sean Hecht, co-executive director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA law school.

Hecht noted that the FAQ doesn’t include any regulatory strategy to ban or even reduce air travel.

“It’s framed even in the FAQ as creating conditions where ‘air travel stops becoming necessary’ because alternatives are available — not limiting or ending air travel,” he said.

David Weiskopf, climate policy director for NextGen Climate America, said the Green New Deal calls for a “net-zero” goal, which recognizes that emissions — including from air travel — won’t be eliminated in 10 years, so they would need to find negative emissions to balance them out.

“The comment about cows and planes is not at all an expression of a policy goal to actually eliminate either. It is delivering information that some supporters may not want to hear — that we will not zero out emissions completely, so we need some additional negative emissions — expressed in what I take to be a colloquial tone that unfortunately left it open to misconstrual by critics,” he said. “No serious observer, supporter of the Green New Deal, climate scientist, or other climate advocate would take these statements as expressing a policy aim to eliminate cows or planes.”

Air travel retains a unique role in moving people long distances.

“When people rank the difficulty of finding structural solutions to greenhouse gas emissions in various sectors, air travel is one of the hardest both technologically and practically, and there aren’t serious policy proposals yet that would solve the issue through limiting air travel or changing the energy sources for commercial aircraft on a significant scale,” Hecht said. “So it’s not a priority for policy.”

Serious steps that the United States could take to reduce emissions from air travel emissions would include more efficient planes, more direct routes and alternative bio-based low-carbon fuels.

In the long run, electric planes may be feasible, said Paul Bledsoe, a strategic advisor at the Progressive Policy Institute and a lecturer on environmental policy at American University.

“No serious climate experts advocate ending air travel — that’s simply a red-herring,” said Bledsoe, who was a climate change adviser to the Clinton White House.

We rate this statement False.

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This article is a redacted version of a post that originally appeared on the Altexsoft blog. It is republished here with permission.

Two fundamental needs connect all airlines: revenue and passenger satisfaction. To satisfy customers, carriers seek ways to learn more about their clients and provide a set of additional services like baggage insurance or onboard food. Those services, also called ancillaries, are offered for additional fees. Given the small margins for core transportation services, the fees help to generate profits.

To be able to sell ancillaries to the passengers and be more profitable, airlines struggle to deliver personalised content to their travelers. Considering that getting in touch with the end user is nearly impossible via the channels provided by global distribution systems (or GDSs), a new standard emerged to resolve the issue.

The air travel industry confronted big changes when the New Distribution Capability (or NDC) debuted in 2012. Lufthansa, British Airways, American Airlines, and Iberia were the first to adopt NDC. And the technology continues to make its way in airline distribution, as well as other means of improving airline operations.

What is NDC?

NDC stands for the New Distribution Capability, which is essentially an XML standard created by the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) to allow airline service providers to deliver rich content and ancillaries to their customers. Basically, NDC is a communication protocol, aimed at replacing the old EDIFACT protocol, that has been around since the 1980s and used by GDSs.

A new protocol using XML allows for bringing rich content and ancillaries directly to online travel agencies, GDSs, and travel management companies via a set of standard APIs, used in the travel industry. Additionally, XML is much more flexible and updatable.

What benefits does NDC provide?

Personalised shopping experience and access to customer information. Currently, most of the customer personal data remain in the hands of middlemen, OTAs and GDSs. This means that airlines get just basic information about their clients, which doesn’t allow for personalising the shopping experience, the thing that has become a standard in modern travel eCommerce. The NDC standard’s goal is to provide airlines with direct information about their customers.

Content and pricing autonomy. Another benefit of personalisation is pricing autonomy. Currently, most airlines publish their tariffs via ATPCO, the tech provider and main source of pricing data. Having a third party as an intermediary between revenue management and distribution channels means that airlines miss the opportunity of dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing is the ability to create personalised fare and travel package offers based on individual client information. The new XML standard allows airlines to build their own APIs and change prices independently adding value to their offers and adjusting prices individually to each customer.

Rich content offers, ancillaries, and discounts. Distributing the flight data via GDS’s EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce, and Transport), airlines are unable to include ancillaries in their offers. This results in financial losses for service suppliers as ancillaries are the main source of profits for carriers.

Product differentiation. The traditional GDS model only permits airlines to display prices and schedules. While tariff metasearch engines and OTAs make it easy for travelers to compare pricing, airlines can’t market their added value services and fully compete. Rich content, that includes all service details, solves this problem.

Reduced reliance on legacy systems. Most airlines use legacy passenger service systems (PSS) that contain reservation info, fares, and schedule. The main purpose of the PSS is to show which seats are available for a given flight. PSSs may have poor performance, a number of other restrictions, and most PSS providers really lag in modernisation. NDC will act as a separate engine outside of legacy systems that allow for presenting data stored in PSS databases using airlines’ private interfaces.

The first set of official standards was released on September 1, 2015. A new messaging standard promised to change the way airline tickets are distributed. This will help service suppliers bring personalised content directly to OTAs, TMCs, and metasearch engines, bypassing Global Distribution Systems (GDSs). As a result, NDC was supposed to break the oligopoly of GDSs that formed over time.

To understand the current situation in airline distribution and get a detailed background on why NDC has emerged, we need to look back in time.

How airline distribution works: historical and modern perspectives

The distribution system in the air travel industry includes many players in the field. To link end customers with the actual airline, there are a number of intermediaries, represented by travel agencies, tariff publishers, GDSs, and so on. Most of the major players appeared decades ago or morphed from the older formations and continue to exist.

Let’s have a deeper look at the airline distribution landscape from the historical perspective. This will allow for a comprehensive understanding of the current state of NDC adoption and the roles of the players involved.

The timeline of flight distribution in the air travel industryFlight distribution automation. In 1964, IBM and American Airlines developed the first computer reservation system Sabre, which is still around today. Sabre allowed American Airlines ticketing agents to search for flights using digital inventory, make reservations, and confirm them via computer terminals. It also decreased the error rate and gave access to customers’ PNR (Passenger Name Records). Sabre quickly became a serious advantage for American, resulting in the appearance of more Computer Reservation Systems (CRSs).

Central reservation systems emergence. Until 1972, nearly all major airlines in America adopted their own customised versions of CRSs. All of them originated from PARS – a standardised system for medium-size carriers by IBM.

Bringing terminals to travel agents. During the 1970s, all CRS providers struggled to bring their systems to travel agents, installing terminals at their offices to make searching for flights and booking semi-automatic and remove the booking load from airlines. The American Society of Travel Agents and airline platform providers attempted to create a unified CRS for all travel agents. As a result, in 1976 United, American, and Eastern airlines shared access to their CRSs. Airlines offered to travel agencies long-term contracts, for which they supplied hardware, software, and training for a monthly subscription fee to get most of the bookings made via CRS. In exchange, travel agents were obliged to book more via CRSs.

Price independence. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 allowed airlines in the USA to set the price for fares independent of government regulations. This influenced the market and the demand for CRSs among travel agencies increased even more.

Mass CRS adoption. By 1989, over 95 percent of travel agents signed contracts with CRS providers, and 75 percent of all tickets were booked via travel agencies.

GDSs join the game

GDS emergence. After 1996, the US Transportation Department obliged airlines to share the same content from their inventories across all CRSs equally. Meanwhile, CRSs started to become independent businesses. For instance, Galileo CRS, created by European airlines to compete with Sabre, went public in 1997. Amadeus, another European CRS, did the same in 1999. Sabre became fully independent of American in 2000. That moment can be considered as the point of Global Distribution System (GDS) emergence in the world as CRS providers grew into GDSs and became an independent, fast growing power, morphing from inventory instruments to monopolists in air travel distribution we know today.

GDS consolidates travel data from various service suppliers and allows travel agents to search and book flights. So, for the travel agencies and for customers as well, it’s not necessary to connect directly to each supplier. Currently, the major GDSs are represented by Sabre (including Abacus), Amadeus, and Travelport (Apollo, Galileo, and Worldspan). This doesn’t mean that CRSs have disappeared. They became the parts of passenger service systems, or PSS, which also include airline inventory and departure control systems.

Meanwhile, GDSs settled Internet connection, providing travel agencies with the software to build their own websites. So, new channels of distribution came up via the web, and online travel agencies (OTAs) emerged.

Third-party players in airline distribution

The distribution system also includes third parties that perform either supplier or intermediary roles between airlines and other players:

ATPCO, or Airline Tariff Publishing Company, is engaged in fare and fare-related data collection, providing it to GDSs, their related travel agencies, OTAs, and fare search engines.

OAG, a United Kingdom-based provider of digital data and applications for the flight industry, manages the largest flight schedule database for over 4 thousand airports.

Innovata is another schedule database provider, being a strategic partner of IATA.

In a GDS-centered distribution, these tech providers play an important information role, preventing airlines from fully owning their data. For instance, to change prices, airlines must publish them via ATPCO first.

Recent events and NDC background

A new issue appeared during the late 2000s. GDSs failed to support airlines in sharing their rich content across OTAs, giving no options to merchandise additional services, thus cutting down revenue. According to the IdeaWorks’ ancillary revenue report of 2009, worldwide ancillary revenue reached €11 ($13.5) billion. Without any doubt, offering bundled services to the right customers became a critical task for service suppliers. But, the GDS oligopoly with its old-world EDIFACT protocol technically doesn’t allow for distributing rich content and acquiring customer personal data.

Generally, two main events impacted NDC emergence and its further adoption among airlines.

American Airlines vs Sabre lawsuit. The lawsuit was initiated by American Airlines and US Airways to persuade a jury that Sabre was in violation of the US antitrust law. The carriers sought compensation for financial losses associated with the Full Content Agreement that GDSs force airlines to sign. According to the agreement, carriers had to publish all their inventory via GDSs. The lawsuit, which lasted over 6 years, resulted in Sabre having to pay $5 million in compensation. The case attracted the attention of industry representatives. The jury found the Full Content Agreement unlawful, but the compensation didn’t even cover 1 percent of American Airline’s losses.

Lufthansa GDS surcharge and direct bookings. The German flagship airline, Lufthansa, in the summer of 2015 announced that it would surcharge every booking made via GDS €16 ($18). The initiative was called a Distribution Cost Charge, and it put a lot of pressure on travel agencies, as it was a step away from the traditional GDS distribution model. Nevertheless, Lufthansa took further action, paying travel agencies one euro for every flight booked via their NDC channel. British Airways and Iberia began penalising bookings via GDS. The charge was £8/€9.50 (about $11) respectively.

In 2017, Lufthansa moved away from GDS and established direct channel bookings on their website. The Lufthansa Group began offering discounts for booking via their NDC channel. This move led travel agencies to invest in direct connection technical infrastructure needed to create a GDS-free middle ground. As an IT provider, Farelogix got a contract with Lufthansa to expand its NDC API, and support its adoption among travel agencies using it.

The current state of NDC adoption

Currently, representatives from nearly all parties in airline distribution have embarked on the NDC initiative one way or another.

According to the latest IATA NDC program update, the list of certified deployments reached 65 carriers. The number seems to have grown significantly since 2017 when IATA reported only 50 airlines adopting NDC. But, compared to the overall number of airlines connected to the major three GDSs, which is over 400, NDC adopters seem to be a minority.

The report also includes information about the 46 IT providers offering NDC solutions development and implementation.

In 2018 IATA published a presentation of NDC standards, that includes new data on the number of airlines adopting NDC and IT providers.

NDC adopters among airlines

Major airlines managed to develop their NDC solutions, which sometimes differ in implementation. Here are some examples of NDC implementation across airlines.

Lufthansa was the first one to introduce a GDS surcharge and implement direct booking connection in its distribution. Currently, Lufthansa’s direct booking includes several distribution channels: travel agencies direct, aggregators, supplier mobile application, and supplier website. While its NDC version allows for offering rich content, the support of personalised bookings is still to be reached.

British Airways developed an NDC solution and integrated it with Kayak. Now their tickets are available directly through the Kayak platform. British Airways API allows for distributing through the following channels: direct connect through OTAs, IATA’s travel agents, GDSs, and online booking tools. Similar to Lufthansa’s API, British Airways doesn’t support personalised bookings yet.

Air Canada allows their API to be used freely across all channels. It seems that Air Canada presents the fullest range of NDC “advantages” for the moment, providing rich content, personalised bookings, airline profiles, air, and non-air related ancillaries.

Flydubai also has a competitive NDC implementation, being relatively equal to what Air Canada offers. The only difference is that Flydubai allows for distribution only through travel agencies and OTAs.

So, only a few among the NDC adopters have managed to present the full range of NDC benefits. Others are still establishing the connectivity between the distributors to get their direct channels to work.

IT providers of NDC solutions

IT providers are the companies offering tech services for the industry, including API development and their implementation at airlines. The list of IT providers, that are certified by IATA and showcase a large number of implementations, includes:

SITA, a global tech (IT) and communications provider in the airline industry. As SITA has a partnership agreement with ATPCO, they developed an NDC Exchange platform. NDC Exchange is an industry-owned platform that will help to deliver air price content via NDC APIs.

Farelogix is a technology company that provides SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) NDC solutions for American Airlines, Air Canada, and Delta. In 2017 it was announced that Farelogix will be acquired by Sabre, the deal to be sealed in early 2019.

OpenJaw Tech is an IATA certified strategic partner that also provides NDC solutions for the market. OpenJaw Technologies is known for supporting such airlines as British Airways and Iberia. IATA has also chosen OpenJaw Tech to be their One Order strategic partner.

Travelsky is a Chinese general IT provider of SaaS solutions to NDC adopters.

All the IT providers should be certified by IATA to develop their tech solutions for the airlines and other third parties. The certification NDC program can be found on IATA’s website.

Disadvantages and difficulties with NDC

Despite being a great opportunity, NDC has at least two major drawbacks that slow down its adoption across all major carriers.

NDC is not really a standard. The use of XML instead of EDIFACT is supposed to be a standard, but in reality, the implementations are different and depend on the IT provider. So, there is no real “standard” for all. That means that if every airline would plug into their own NDC pipeline, there would be countless API channels impossible for OTAs and TMCs to integrate with. The only winners in this situation seem to be IT providers.

Distributors won’t leave the GDS pipeline. Travel agents are still more likely to use GDSs because they don’t require any changes and still generate revenues. For OTAs and TMCs a switch to NDC means additional expenses which don’t guarantee any benefits. The reason for that is a severe market fragmentation with different NDC solutions and no one-size-fits-all solution. For instance, American Airlines reported 4 million tickets sold via its NDC channel in 2017, which doesn’t look like a large percentage of annual revenue. Today, NDC adoption remains a premium option, rather than a necessity.

Considering the fact that distributors are more likely to stick with GDS, you may ask a reasonable question. Why wouldn’t GDSs adopt NDC?

NDC adoption across GDSs

The latest announcements made by the major GDS companies point out that they won’t quit the game yet. Obviously, GDS remained an all-purpose option for OTAs and TMCs. All three GDS giants have announced that they are going to participate in NDC adoption as a part of airline distribution evolution.

Travelport was the first of GDSs to obtain level 3 compliance as an NDC aggregator, which is a required status to provide NDC services. Travelport’s NDC product was presented in 2017 via a roadmap, and it was announced that the product will be initially designed for airline companies. But the product will be enhanced in 2019 to be integrated with OTAs.

SABRE made an official announcement at The Beat Live in October 2018, that it will reach level 3 compliance as an aggregator of NDC. That said, Sabre was recognised by IATA as a level 3 NDC IT provider in early 2018. The compliance level recognition means that the company is compatible with IATA’s NDC standards and is able to provide a full range of services.

Amadeus is developing its NDC-X program, and has also reached level 3 as an NDC aggregator.

For GDS aggregators, NDC adoption became a vital question. As it’s impossible for GDSs to integrate with each separate NDC channel, they decided to force the adoption of an XML standard for the industry. The process goes even further as all parties of a traditional distribution chain start adopting NDC. In October 2018, ATPCO announced its collaboration with SITA, an IT provider, to develop a simple API for NDC adoption.

NDC will come, but via GDS

The New Distribution Capability was supposed to allow airlines to bypass GDS. The current state of the industry vividly illustrates that as of 2019, GDSs are likely to remain the oligopoly even in terms of NDC adoption. As airlines will still be able to merchandise their additional services through NDC pipelines, they seemingly have achieved their goals. But the question is more about the transparency now, as it is a big question whether GDS NDC aggregators will allow carriers to directly reach their customers.

The only party left in uncertainty are distributors represented by various travel agencies that will have to wait until each airline/GDS is ready to switch to its NDC solution.

KPBS anchor Ebone Monet and SDSU marketing lecturer Miro Copic discuss some of the week’s top business stories.

This week’s topics:

Air travel continues to soar in San Diego

San Diego International Airport reported its fifth consecutive year of record passenger traffic in 2018. Part of the reason for the boost is the airport’s recent work to increase capacity. Also this week, Southwest Airlines was granted approval to begin offering direct flights to Hawaii from several California cities, including San Diego.

RELATED: San Diego Airport Touts 2018 A Good Year For Major Projects

Qualcomm rolls out 5G plan for 2019

2019 is shaping up to be a big year for Qualcomm when it comes to 5G technology. The San Diego company showcased its latest innovations this week at the Mobile World Congress, one of the industry’s marquee events of the year. Much of Qualcomm’s future success will rely on how other companies integrate its technology in the next generation of mobile communications.

Weight Watchers looks to Oprah to rebound

Stock for WW, the company previously known as Weight Watchers, suffered a sharp decline this week. Industry analysts say part of the company’s downturn is due to last year’s rebranding. The company will rely on Oprah Winfrey to be the face of a new ad campaign set to air this spring. Winfrey also owns a stake in the company.

Anica Colbert,

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