Sabre will roll-out American Airlines’ NDC content from 3 April through its Offer and Order APIs, the Sabre Red 360 agency point-of-sale tool, and its GetThere online booking tool.

The global distribution system announced on Wednesday this week that Sabre-connected travel buyers, agencies and developer partners will be able to shop, book and service American Airlines’ NDC content ahead of the carrier’s removal of up to 40 per cent of fares from traditional EDIFACT-based channels next week.

Sabre’s vice president of NDC and airline supply, Kathy Morgan, told Business Travel News that “the only thing that a [travel management company] has to do is place an order to request access for American NDC content, and that is through the Sabre Central Marketplace.”

In a message to agency partners this week, American Airlines said all three of the major GDSs – Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport – would be ready to deliver NDC content by 3 April.

“Like any significant technology transition, some providers will offer more servicing features and functionalities in their initial releases than others,” said the airline’s vice president of global sales, Thomas Rajan. “The small number of servicing functionalities that won’t be available immediately either don’t affect a significant number of transactions or will become available shortly.”

For Sabre, it has “shop, book, price, pay, cancel, void, refund, ticket, voluntary changes, schedule change notification and schedule change management for orders or [passenger name records] for single passengers,” said Morgan. What is missing and coming in the middle of the year, Morgan added, are those same capabilities for multiple passengers. “We’ll have those closed in about another quarter,” she added.

The carrier published its new fare basis code convention on
27 March and from 28 March travel retailers could view the “exact fares
in precise markets” that will be available only through NDC connections
from Monday, according to Rajan.

The NDC-only fares will
still be visible in EDIFACT-based channels but, from 3 April, travel
retailers will need an NDC connection to book and ticket those fares.

Sabre and American conducted a pilot with 50 TMCs in recent months, including the three largest ones, to prepare for 3 April. The biggest challenges that came out of that pilot were around items outside of Sabre’s “technological integration,” Morgan said, characterising the challenges as related to the operationalisation of NDC.

It seems certain that even those TMCs in the pilot might have some challenges next week. BCD Travel and CWT have openly voiced concerns about American’s move, noting that “no one can offer a seamless customer solution by April 1.”

Similar concern was noted in a survey of 25 travel buyers “at the forefront of NDC development” recently conducted by Festive Road. Only one of the buyers believed their TMC’s agents will have access to all of American’s NDC content by 3 April.

Meanwhile, European travel management company Travel Planet this week announced it will provide American Airlines’ NDC content through its proprietary booking tool from 3 April via a direct connection with the carrier.