NEW YORK, New York (WABC) — Runners are you ready? The United Airlines NYC Half is the One to Run. It’s coming up March 17th, and WABC-TV, Channel 7 Eyewitness News will offer complete coverage, including:
* Pro race look-ins and interviews along the course with inspiring runners * A Pro race live video stream available here on abc7ny.com, on nyrr.org, and on Facebook and Twitter * A full recap show to air at 1pm on ABC7NY.
Read more about the day’s coverage in this news release from the New York Road Runners and ABC7NY.
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WABC-TV is teaming up with New York Road Runners and the co-executive producers Endeavor Content to offer viewers in New York City and around the world three different ways to watch the 2019 United Airlines NYC Half.
The 14th running of the United Airlines NYC Half — on Sunday, March 17 — will take more than 25,000 runners on a 13.1-mile park-to-park tour from Brooklyn to Manhattan.
The race starts in Prospect Park and passes through iconic New York City landmarks, including Grand Army Plaza, the United Nations, Grand Central Terminal and Times Square.
Runners end the race near the iconic TCS New York City Marathon finish line in Central Park.
Viewers can watch the race in three ways:
-Channel 7 Eyewitness News, starting at 6:00 a.m. ET, will offer coverage of the race, including features and interviews with inspiring runners, and live professional athlete race look-ins. This will be made available on WABC-TV, Channel 7 and the ABC app in the New York area and at abc7ny.com.
-Pro Race Livestream, live at 7:10 a.m. ET, will cover the men’s and women’s professional athlete races on multiple ABC7 and NYRR social and digital media channels, including abc7ny.com, @abc7NY on Twitter, and /abc7NY on Facebook; and nyrr.org, @nyrr on Twitter and /New York Road Runners on Facebook.
-ABC7 Race Recap Show, airing from 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET, will offer condensed coverage of the men’s and women’s professional athlete races, along with features and interviews with inspiring runners. This show will be made available on WABC-TV, Channel 7 in the New York area and abc7ny.com.
The event will have a star-studded professional athlete field that features nine Olympians and nine Paralympians, including all four defending champions in Ben True (USA), Buze Diriba (ETH), Ernst van Dyk (RSA), and Manuela Schr (SUI), along with 2018 Boston Marathon champion Des Linden (USA) and Olympic silver medalist Paul Chelimo (USA) who will be making his much-anticipated debut at the half-marathon distance.
In addition to the professional athletes and 25,000 citizen runners covering the 13.1 miles from Brooklyn to Manhattan, nearly 1,000 youth runners will participate in 1200-meter heats through Times Square in the Rising New York Road Runners race at the United Airlines NYC Half. NYRR is celebrating 20 years of providing free youth running programs, serving nearly 250,000 youth across the country annually through Rising New York Road Runners.
-*- About New York Road Runners (NYRR) NYRR’s mission is to help and inspire people through running. Since 1958, New York Road Runners has grown from a local running club to the world’s premier community running organization. NYRR’s commitment to New York City’s five boroughs features races, community events, free youth running initiatives and school programs, the NYRR RUNCENTER featuring the New Balance Run Hub, and training resources that provide hundreds of thousands of people each year, from children to seniors, with the motivation, know-how, and opportunity to Run for Life. NYRR’s premier event, and the largest marathon in the world, is the TCS New York City Marathon. Held annually on the first Sunday in November, the race features 50,000 runners, from the world’s top professional athletes to a vast range of competitive, recreational, and charity runners. To learn more, visit www.nyrr.org.
Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, as the old saw goes—but it’s usually better when you don’t have to have emergency services personnel help you off the plane. And that goes double for times when the firefighters don’t need a ladder to reach the boarding door. Still, on the ground is on the ground—which is a place it seems likely that the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 4933 are very happy to be right now, after their commuter jet landed off the runway in rural Maine, ripping the landing gear off in the process.
The United Embraer EMB-145XR commuter jet, which was operated by regional carrier CommutAir under the United Express banner, took off from Newark Liberty International Airport this morning at 9:23am, according to Flight Aware, on a route that was scheduled to see it landing and at the gate in Presque Isle, Maine, at 11:30am.
Things, quite obviously, did not go according to plan. According to WABI, the plane slid off the runway to the right after landing, apparently causing the landing gear to be sheared off as it came to a stop.
Three of the 28 passengers reportedly suffered minor injuries, as did the pilot.
Pictures posted to the Crown of Maine Facebook page show the crashed Embraer in vivid detail, lying flat on its belly on the snow. One image shows what appears to be fire fighters from the Presque Isle Fire Department aiding individuals off the aircraft, the damaged nose of the commuter jet clearly visible; the second shows the rear of the plane, with one set of the rear landing gear jammed up against the port side engine several feet above the ground.
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.
‘Big Bang Theory’ actress Mayim Bialik took to social media Sunday evening to share her frustrations with United Airlines. Bialik was upset with a United employee for turning her away from her flight and allegedly ‘shutting the gate in [her] face.’ Bialik shared her theory as to why she may have been treated this way, saying that perhaps the worker ‘just doesn’t like ‘The Big Bang Theory.”
“Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik has a few theories about why she was turned away from her United Airlines flight on Sunday evening.
Bialik, 43, told her Twitter followers she was upset with the carrier after an airline employee allegedly “shut the gate in [her] face” at a Houston airport, and she subsequently remarked that perhaps the worker who did it “just doesn’t like ‘The Big Bang Theory.’”
“To the @UnitedAirlines flight attendant who shut the boarding gate in my face. I made my connecting flight in Houston,” Bialik tweeted just before 7 p.m., local time.
“[I]t was a tight squeeze but You said there were plenty of open seats. [W]hen you saw my carry on suitcase you said there was no room and shut the door in my face.”
The actress went on to claim that five other passengers from her connecting flight were allowed on the plane, all with carry-on luggage. Bialik further suggested that the crew could have placed her luggage in the first-class she reserved, and allowed her to sit in an unreserved economy seat.
“Maybe the first class seat I was supposed to sit in could have held it and I would have gladly sat in all of the open seats anywhere on that plane,” she wrote.
Bialik also took her frustrations to Instagram, where she elaborated on the alleged incident and again put forth her hypotheses as to why the gate agent didn’t allow her on the flight.
“Maybe she hates [‘The Big Bang Theory’]. Maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe she hates women who look like they’re going to cry,” Bialik wrote.
“Now my suitcase is broken from running so hard and aggressively, my asthma is super angry and random people think I’m a prima donna because as she shut the door I said ‘I have a first class seat!’ I didn’t mean I deserve it more, I meant can my suitcase sit in my first class seat and I’ll sit anywhere else? Not a good day for me and @united,” she added.
In a statement to Fox News, a representative for United Airlines says the carrier is reviewing the case.
“We were able to get Ms. Bialik on the next flight to Los Angeles and we are reviewing what happened with our team in Houston,” a spokesperson confirmed.
Travel commerce platform Travelport has said that that United Airlines will continue its long-standing relationship with the former into 2021 as part of a multi-year agreement. Both companies will continue to work together to enhance the delivery of United’s product offering, including ancillaries and fare families, to agencies and corporations through Travelport’s traditional ATPCO and API platforms, including deployment of the airline content made available consistent with IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard.
United has benefited already from Travelport’s Rich Content and Branding merchandising solution by differentiating its offerings and dynamically distributing content across the globe. This tool allows customers to easily compare airline offerings and take advantage of United’s comprehensive route network and improved customer experience.
“I’m delighted to announce that our relationship with United has been extended for a multi-year term. United has seen great success with our Rich Content and Branding solution and extended global reach,� said Damian Hickey, Travelport’s Global Head of Air Travel Partners. “We look forward to supporting United’s growth, its dedication to providing better experiences for agencies and travelers worldwide and pioneering NDC solutions.�
“While direct volumes through our award-winning website and mobile app continue to grow, we want to be available across a variety of booking channels, and collaborating with Travelport helps us do that,� said Dave Bartels, Vice President of Pricing and Revenue Management, United Airlines. “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.�
United Airlines announced a design contest, “Her Art Here,” that gives female artists the chance to design a mural for a Boeing 757 in honor of Women’s History Month, according to a news release.
To enter, individuals identifying as a woman, including cisgender, transgender, woman-aligned or nonbinary people, are asked to submit a design online that represents either New York/New Jersey or California — two of United’s biggest markets. The brand has asked that the designs reflect its mission and what the communities mean to the artist. Two winners, one from each region, will get to work with the artist Shantell Martin on a finalized design. Martin’s murals showcasing an interactive airplane window with videos will also be on display in New York and Los Angeles as part of the competition.
Submissions will be judged by a panel from each region, led by United’s regional presidents in those areas, and the public will get to vote for their favorites. Finalists and winners will receive an open gallery show, have their work displayed in United terminals and available for purchase, and win 100,000 MileagePlus award miles. The aircraft with the winning designs will take flight this fall.
Dive Insight:
United Airlines is using “Her Art Here” to highlight its commitment to gender equality and raising awareness about women’s underrepresentation in the art world. The campaign was inspired by statistics from the National Museum of Women in the Arts revealing that 51% of artists are women, but less than 13% of art on display in museums is by women. The contest will give the winners the chance to show off their work on aircraft that will fly an average of 1.6 million miles a year and make about 476 cross-country trips, according to United.
More brands are tying their marketing strategies around support for up-and-coming and underrepresented creatives. PepsiCo’s LifeWTR ran a similar packaging campaign two years ago based on research that 51% of visual artists are women, but that women make up less than 5% of all permanent collections in museums. Fender also just launched a “Fender Next” platform that plans to feature 50 new artists from around the world. The program was inspired by internal research showing that women make up half of all new guitar players, African Americans account for 19% and Latinos for 25%.
United celebrating Women’s History Month is part of the airline’s ongoing efforts to build an emotional connection with consumers, who more frequently want brands to support gender inclusion, positivity and empowerment. United has had its share of bad publicity over the past couple of years, including a passenger being dragged off a flight after it was overbooked in 2017, which led consumers to call out the brand on social media.The death of a puppy on board a flight last year increased negative sentiment on social media for United 140% in the two days following the news, according to a Digimind analysis.
United has started to see a turnaround, however. The company showed the biggest improvement in consumer perception from 2017 to 2018, according to YouGov, with a 9.6-point increase to a -3.5 score on the firm’s annual Buzz rankings. The report examines whether consumers have heard anything negative or positive about a brand over the past two weeks, and is based on a scale from -100 to +100 points.
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.
The scheme of flight distribution through GDSs and via NDC / Source: IATA
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.
The list of airlines that adopted NDC and IT providers certified by IATA / Source: NDC Standard Presentation 2018
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.
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.
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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