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BTC and ASTA rip Resolution 787
The Internation Air Transport Association (IATA) is running into flak from the travel industry as it attempts to win approval of a new XML-based electronic data interchange standard and New Distribution Capability (NDC) for airline bookings.
IATA is trying to win approval for Resolution 787 from the U.S. Department of Transportation. But the filing, which is open for public comment for 21 days, is being opposed by the Business Travel Coalition (BTC) and the American Society of Travel Agents, who say the NDC would fundamentally alter the way airlines are booked and hurt consumers, corporations, and travel agents.
In a statement released yesterday, the BTC said that "IATA is overreaching in the extreme."
"The most powerful global airlines and alliances have expressly agreed, facilitated by IATA’s offices, on a brazen new worldwide business model for how to price and sell tickets" that will "terminate, by agreement among horizontal competitors, the current transparent model for the pricing of tickets, where fares are published and publicly available for comparison-shopping and purchase – by all consumers on a non-discriminatory basis," BTC said.
"To accomplish this goal, airlines would demand consumers’ personal data and put their privacy, security and mobility at risk."
NDC would require consumers to give up substantial personal information—including name, age, nationality, contact details, frequent flyer numbers, whether the purpose of the trip is business or leisure, prior shopping, purchase and travel history and marital status—before being provided offers by airlines, with the aim of charging business travelers more than leisure travelers, BTC said.
"Airline CEOs, who may not have been fully informed of the nature and extent of NDC’s antitrust, data-privacy, corporate customer and public relations complications, may want to investigate their organizations’ due diligence and involvement with this reckless scheme and reconsider the irrevocable negative consequences that would surely rain down on their firms should this initiative continue to be pursued by their trade group," it added.
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