Skift Take
In an exclusive, the leading group of U.S. travel advisors responds to claims by American Airlines that they're Luddites. The group says the carrier's effort to force them to adopt its preferred technology for booking flights is too fast and that, essentially, it's a bully.
The American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) and American Airlines are going head-to-head in a complaint before the U.S. Department of Transport (DOT). Skift reached out to ASTA for the group's latest position following a response from American Airlines last month.
The debate hinges on whether the airline has been wrong to withhold a big chunk of ticket options from travel agencies that fail to adopt its preferred booking technology.
Here's a quick recap on the latest twist in a decade-long saga about how agencies process tickets.
Travel agents have used reservation desktop software based on the Edifact (the United Nations rules for Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport) programming language for decades. American Airlines believes the industry needs modern technology for distribution. A decade ago, it led a multi-airline effort to push travel agents to adopt new technology, known by the shorthand new distribution capability, or NDC. American Airlines has used carrots and sticks to get agents to adopt NDC. Earlier this year, it pulled about 40% of its fare inventory out of the old system. The largest travel management companies (TMCs) and online travel agencies have had the resources to adopt the new tech. However, many smaller travel agencies say the cost and training ef