Organizations Working to Establish Industry Forum with Other Stakeholders To Address Distribution Standard Setting

Open Allies for Airfare Transparency (Open Allies) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) have agreed to a set of conditions the two organizations are jointly recommending to the U.S. DOT in connection with Resolution 787. The two parties have been engaged in a productive dialogue on Resolution 787 since December, and they filed the proposed conditions with the DOT in a joint motion Wednesday.

Resolution 787 recognizes that a standard process is required for airlines to create their own product offer within their own systems (i.e. assemble fares, schedules and availability - all in one transaction) which will be provided directly by and owned by the airline. This will enable more agile pricing and more personalized offerings. In this way, all product offers (including ancillaries) will be available for distribution through all channels that an airline wishes to sell them through. In this regard, this IATA standard will enable the creation of a Dynamic Airline Shopping engine Application Program Interface (DAS API) based on IATA XML messages. The focus of this resolution will describe the main business processes that are required to support it.

The conditions address any possible industry confusion over the scope of Resolution 787 by making clear that any DOT action would not constitute approval or endorsement of any method or business model of distributing air transportation. Other agreed conditions ensure that the adoption of any technical standards ultimately developed as a consequence of Resolution 787 would (i) be entirely voluntary, (ii) not require the disclosure of personal data, (iii) not exclude the use of other standards, and (iv) have no impact on data ownership. The final condition addresses concerns about the new standards developed as a result of Resolution 787 being compatible with existing standards. Open Allies has agreed to withdraw its opposition to DOT action concerning Resolution 787 subject to incorporation of these conditions in any DOT order. (Open Allies, however, does not endorse NDC.)

"We are delighted that we were able to reach agreement on conditions to limit the scope of Resolution 787 and ensure that it addresses only data transmission standard-setting, not a new distribution business model," said Andrew Weinstein, Executive Director of Open Allies. "We believe these conditions will serve all travelers by safeguarding transparency, competition, and consumer choice, while protecting privacy and ensuring that any new standards developed under Resolution 787 are open standards available to all industry participants. We look forward to continuing our dialogue with IATA and other industry stakeholders to develop a collaborative approach to address standard-setting in future."

To further that goal, IATA and Open Allies have agreed to work together and with other stakeholders to establish an industry forum that will support a collaborative approach on distribution standard-setting. The organizations will share additional information about the structure and participants in that forum over the coming days and weeks.

FMI: www.faretransparency.org Joint Motion