The bitter dispute between the US travel agents’ association Asta and British Airways’ US partner American Airlines has ratcheted to a new level after the carrier announced last month it will stop awarding loyalty points and air miles to customers booking though ‘non-preferred’ agencies from May 1.
The battle over American’s imposition of new distribution capability (NDC) technology began last April when the carrier withdrew more than 40% of its fares from GDSs and left full content only available via NDC channels.
Asta accused American of “a clear abuse of market power to force change that no one, including American Airlines, is ready for” and filed a complaint with the US Department of Transportation (DOT) in July.
In a message to members in late February, Asta president and chief executive Zane Kerby denounced American’s latest move to deny loyalty points to customers of travel companies not using NDC channels as “doubling down” on the carrier’s “clear disregard for travel agencies”.
NDC is a technology standard developed by Iata to distribute airline fares and ancillary content to intermediaries via online APIs (application programme interfaces).
Kirby noted agencies “must not only implement NDC, but also sell 30% of American tickets via an NDC channel by April 21” to qualify for air miles and loyalty points, and the threshold “will increase to 50% by October 31”.
He warned: “Many travellers, business and leisure, will no longer earn miles and AA loyalty points because the agencies through which they book cannot meet the unreasonable NDC adoption threshold AA has established and still support the traveller.”
Kirby said: “Problems associated with basic servicing functions such as comparative shopping, split tickets, limitations on cancellations, booking multiple people on the same itinerary, and rebooking remain nearly a year after [American’s] self-imposed NDC launch date, creating extraordinary challenges for agencies and their travellers.”
He described it as “yet another manoeuvre to force NDC on to an industry that is not ready” and said: “We have yet to see a reasonably functioning [NDC] product in the market.”
Asta noted in its complaint to the DoT that despite “years of work” by the GDSs to develop NDC-compliant APIs and links there remain “significant functionality disparities”.
American has accused Asta of a “campaign to misrepresent [its] commitment to delivering a modern retailing experience” and points out it “has connected our NDC content to all three GDSs”.