Pragmatic NDC and Offers and Orders Adoption for Airlines

I’ve spent years in airline distribution, settlement and analytics at Accelya, which handles half of the world’s NDC traffic. And here’s the honest truth: most mid-size airlines aren’t confused about NDC or Offers & Orders. They’re cautious. And they’re right to be.

You’ve heard the promises, you’ve seen the decks and you’ve attended more than your fair share of events. But you’re not a Tier 1 carrier that can afford to burn millions while figuring this out.

So, the real question isn’t whether to move. It’s where to start without destabilising operations or burning through cash while control is slipping.

This page isn’t a manifesto. It’s a collection of things that worked, a few that didn’t, and some patterns that repeat far more often than anyone admits publicly.

Why hesitation is rational, and how airlines still move forward

The anxiety around NDC and Offers & Orders is rarely about technology alone. It’s about ending up in a vendor-driven initiative that starts with inflated expectations, runs for multiple years without clear milestones or exit points, and then can’t be stopped without political fallout.

I’ve watched that happen more than once.

One example that sticks with me: a major airline managed to cut over 80% of its ongoing NDC running costs without changing its core systems at all.

How? By doing something unglamorous: rationalising which offers were actually worth compiling and displaying. There is no commercial value in generating hundreds of offers for a request if travellers and sellers ever look at the first dozen.

Plenty of airlines have paid millions in what I half-jokingly call NDC tuition fees to learn this lesson the hard way. The upside for airlines starting now is that the path is better trodden, if you’re willing to learn from others instead of repeating the same experiments.

One thing that’s easy to get wrong

One recurring attitude is waiting for the industry to converge, expecting the next standard or schema to come out, suggesting that standards maturity and consensus are prerequisites for progress. That time has now passed. Being a first mover on the industry stage was attractive, provided high visibility, innovation credentials, a seat at the table. But it was also risky.

In practice, standards have come a long way but they are far from being “complete”, if they can ever be.

However, conditions have never been as ripe, and the barriers to entry as low as they are today to get started.

This means that, if done right, the risks associated with engaging today are much more manageable.

How to start right? By being very clear and specific about the added value you want, design toward that outcome based on what’s available today, execute, and just keep an eye on best practices as they keep evolving. Airlines that waited for perfect alignment have already waited years. If they move with intent now, they can build momentum and influence much faster.

Where early value comes from

If someone proposes “NDC everywhere” or ripping out your PSS as a starting point, you should be sceptical. Likewise, if cost saving is your primary driver, chances are you are in for a disappointment.

The early wins I’ve seen share a few traits:

Data visibility first: understand where money leaks and revenue opportunities are lost today, especially in indirect channels. Also know what you don’t know (and is worth knowing).
Selective scope: one market, one partner, or one use case you can control but always end-to-end from offer to settlement and not performed as an isolated PoC.
Commerce above technology: don’t fall in love with the technology and the power to enrich the passenger experience endlessly. It’s perfectly rational to make use of a fraction of the technological possibilities when that matches your market strategy.
Passenger experience done sensibly: passengers don’t want that many things. They ultimately want to get from A to B quickly, on-time, and avoiding hassle associated with booking and servicing. You can and absolutely should utilise offers and orders for product differentiation but ancillaries are by far not created equal.

I’ve seen mid-size airlines achieve meaningful unit economics improvements within months once they focused on what actually moved the needle.

Legacy is not always a bad word

Conventional wisdom exists for a reason. In many parts of an airline, legacy stability and proven operations matter more than architectural elegance.

There’s an old saying: no one ever got fired for hiring Amadeus.

Where Offers & Orders programs struggle is when they’re treated as a technological crusade.

For most airlines today, the best outcome is a mix:

best-in-class providers where differentiation creates value
legacy systems where stability, scale, and predictability matter most

There are now a few examples of true modularity affecting parts of the offer to settlement value chain. Full flexibility, however, has yet to be demonstrated credibly.

For some airlines, a big-bang change is viable. For many, it isn’t. Both can be right, if the objective is clear.

The “jet engine under the hood”

Every airline needs to answer one uncomfortable question early:

What is the one experience or capability that creates a pull rather than forcing you to push new standards onto your distribution network and then explain yourself endlessly? In other words, what is the jet engine under the hood?

A short, focused retreat with a small executive group and a few trusted partners can go a long way to define precisely what value your transformation should bring.

No slides. No vendor pitches.

Just clarity on what “winning” actually means for your airline.

Once that’s clear, alignment across distribution, operations, finance, and IT becomes much easier, and a lot of bad ideas quietly fall away.

Start with intent today but keep options open

Set explicit gates. Define success at 6 months. Keep costs variable where possible. Pause when scope starts creeping “for future readiness.” Scale only when commercial impact is visible and operations stay stable.

After 6–12 months, a healthy program usually looks like this:

a few live, controlled use cases
better distribution economics visibility
no irreversible system bets
stronger internal capability
vendors aligned or can be exited without drama

Who this approach is and isn’t for

Architects who view legacy as a moral failure and want to redesign the entire stack in one clean sweep will likely become frustrated. Those solutions can be elegant, but they are often expensive, slow, and politically exhausting.

But this approach works well for executives who see Offers & Orders as a business problem first, not a technology project.

Modernisation doesn’t require erasing the past. It requires knowing where change creates value and where stability is the smarter choice.

I’ve spent enough time inside Offer, Order, and Settlement services to know how much real value sits in so-called legacy systems in the right places. Airlines were the first to build globally connected computerised platforms at scale. Although we have come a long way since then, some foundations still exist for a reason, and replacing them just “because they’re old” is rarely a compelling business case.

I’ve seen enough failed programs to be comfortable saying this path works. Not perfectly. But predictably.

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