At the IATA World Passenger Symposium in Bangkok Accelya announced the launch of its comprehensive OOSD solution called FLX ONE alongside new partnerships.

In a press release dated October 1st IBM announced that its consulting arm will work with FLYR to bring an Offer and Order Management system based on FLYR’s technology to the market.

At the T2RLEngage 24 Conference in London Sabre and Virgin Australia announced that the Australian airline is the launch customer for SabreMosaic, providing Offer, Order and Deliver services.

On 23 September Datalex announced that Air Macau has gone live with its Offer Management solution. On the same day it announced the launch of its Offer and Order Management system and three days later the company disclosed a new €25 million capital injection, predominantly from existing shareholders.

At the T2RLEngage 24 Conference in London CitizenPlane announced that it has acquired PSS provider TTI and will offer a new ‘Airline OS’ to the market, initially targeting smaller tier 3 and tier 4 airlines.

In a briefing to T2RL on 13 August 2024 SAP confirmed that it will no longer offer a solution for Offer and Order Management. It stressed that it remains committed to serving the airline industry and will concentrate on its strengths in Customer Management and Financial Management, including Order Accounting and Settlement.

T2RL assesses what this means for the market in our First View analysis.

On 19 July 2024, IT security vendor CrowdStrike released a software update to its vulnerability scanner, Falcon Sensor. The update was flawed and resulted in around 8.5 million computers running Microsoft Windows being disabled.

On 28 May 2024 American Airlines announced that Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja would leave the airline in June. At the same time one of Mr Raja’s key initiatives to restrict the award of AAdvantage miles to customers of traditional travel agencies was reversed.

On April 18, 2024, Delta Air Lines announced a strategic partnership with Accelya to adopt the Accelya FLX Platform for its New Distribution Capability (NDC) technology platform. This agreement marks Delta’s first move to enhance its retailing capabilities and streamline distribution with NDC. The platform aims to enable Delta to offer personalised and consistent services across all its sales channels.

On 16 April 2024 British Airways and Amadeus announced that “British Airways has selected Amadeus as its technology partner and Amadeus Nevio, a new portfolio of modular solutions built on open and AI technology, to deliver the airline’s Offer and Order strategic goals.” The announcement leaves open the question of whether BA will adopt Amadeus’s solutions for Settle and Deliver.

ATPCO has been engaged in a transformation to ensure it remains relevant in a world where its original function of fare filing is reducing in importance. As well as internal initiatives such as Airline Order Posting it has also made acquisitions. The most significant of these was RouteHappy which it bought in 2018. Now it has made another significant investment in the shape of 3Victors.

IATA held a series of industry meetings including the World Passenger Symposium in Chicago during the week of 23rd October. This represented a departure from usual proceedings for IATA as it combined various closed industry meetings with both the World Passenger Symposium and the World Financial Symposium at a single venue. T2RL was invited to attend the combined WPS/WFS but in common with all non-airline organisations was excluded from the closed meetings.

On October 19th Amadeus announced that it has contracted to supply PSS to Vietnam Airlines.

Virgin Atlantic has relaunched its initiative in NDC sales and servicing with an announcement that it would not penalise other distribution technologies. This sets it apart from most of the early adopters.

Sabre has announced that Kurt Ekert will succeed Sean Menke as CEO on 27 April 2023.

On 23 February 2023 Hitit announced that it had entered a five year contract with Turkish Airlines Group to supply its Crane Passenger Services System to the group’s AnadoluJet subsidiary.

At the start of the year Amadeus launched the spin-off of its payments division into the company Outpayce1 which has applied to the Bank of Spain for an eMoney license. It stated that if the license is granted it will focus on several payment initiatives, firstly ‘pre-paid virtual card issuing within its B2B Wallet solution, which travel agencies use to pay travel providers such as airlines and hotels.’

Over the Christmas period of 2022 airlines across North America were impacted by a severe cold spell that closed airports across a wide geographical range. All airlines were affected but there were distinct differences in their ability to absorb and recover from the disruption.

Finnair and Amadeus have announced in a press release that Finnair will use Amadeus solutions for both Offers and Orders in a step that will see them cooperate on ‘the transformation of airline retailing’. T2RL speculates on what this step could mean for both airlines and IT vendors.

American Airlines (AA) has announced significant changes to its distribution strategy, which follows on from news in October that it has deals with all three major GDSs to distribute NDC content. This First View analyses what this may mean for the market and if this could allow AA to mitigate revenue risk.

Accelya has announced that Sam Gilliland, the former CEO of Sabre, will be its new CEO. Jim Davidson will take the advisory role of Vice Chairman. T2RL speculates what this appointment could mean for Accelya and what options the company has to move forward.

T2RLEngage 2022 took place from 28th – 30th September in London. The conference marked the first face-to-face T2RL conference following two years of virtual events. The conference attracted over 90 airline delegates representing 50 airlines boarding over 40% of global passengers. T2RL has highlighted three key takeaways from the event.

During its Elevate conference held in Washington DC last week ATPCO announced a new service called Airline Order Posting that is intended to ease the transition to the new world of Offer/Order based airline distribution. This first view speculates what a solution like this one could mean for the industry.

Following the announcement from SAS that it will launch a compulsory Distribution Commission Program for all travel agencies in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, the old wholesale commercial model is new again. In this First View, T2RL speculates what this means for each stakeholder in the market.

Only two months after its acquisition of Newshore, FLYR Labs has announced another significant addition to its portfolio, Pribas. Pribas adds inventory and merchandisi

Following the announcement that FLYR Labs has acquired Newshore, T2RL has noted several companies that have ambitions to expand their offering in the airline commercial IT environment. This First View highlights a few of these companies and what needs to be thought about when entering a space dominated by Amadeus, Sabre and TravelSky.

On the claim that Sabre’s contract with US Airways was anti-competitive the jury found in favour of the GDS company. On the related claim that Sabre operated an unlawful monopoly it found for the airline but awarded

S7 has announced, via a third-party source, its migration from the Amadeus PSS to Russian provider ORS, formerly known as TAIS. The provider was chosen via a tender process and the migration will take place in October this year. It has been reported by the Russian press that the Russian Ministry of Transport in 2019 ordered all Russian carriers to localised their booking systems. It has also been reported that the date for these forced migrations has been postponed several times. The most recent reports say that carriers are required to localise their booking services by the end of October 2022. This six page T2RL report offers analysis and speculation.

The Flight Centre Travel Group announced that it has increased its holding in Dubai-based NDC aggregator TP Connects to 70%, giving it a controlling interest. Flight Centre previously held a 22.5% stake which it acquired in February 2020. This first view explores why it could see this as an opportunity and what challenges it and other aggregators may face moving forward.

All three major GDS companies have announced that they have removed or are removing the schedules and fares of Aeroflot from their databases. This effectively prevents travel agents using Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport selling tickets for the Russian flag-carrier’s services. This First View explores the effects this may have and speculates on potential short and longer term impacts of current events.

Qantas has announced a promotional offer available exclusively to travel agents participating in its NDC channels. The offer provides a specific di