What Is NDC and How Does It Affect Travel Agents?

If you've worked in travel for more than a few years, you've heard "NDC" from your GDS rep, from airlines and in the trade press. It isn't a passing trend, and it isn't the end of the GDS either. It's a slow, uneven change in how airlines put products in front of agents, and it affects what you can see, what you can sell and how hard a booking is to change afterwards. This guide separates the standard itself from the commercial pressure around it, and ends with what to do on Monday morning.

What Does NDC Stand For?

NDC stands for New Distribution Capability. It's an XML-based data transmission standard developed under IATA, the International Air Transport Association, and open to any third party, intermediary or IT provider, whether or not they're an IATA member. IATA launched the programme around its Resolution 787 in October 2012, and it keeps publishing new releases: the 2024 generation is called NDC 24.1. The standard is built around airline "Offer and Order" processes, which becomes important later.

What Came Before NDC?

Traditional airline distribution grew up around the GDS. Airlines file fares and rules, typically through a central distributor such as ATPCO, those fares flow into Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport, and travel agencies query the GDS for availability and prices. Messaging between systems used EDIFACT, a standard dating from the pre-internet era. The flow is simple: airline loads, GDS stores, agent searches, results come back.

It worked well when a fare was a price plus rules. As airlines introduced branded fares, dynamic pricing and a la carte extras (seats, bags, priority boarding), EDIFACT struggled. It wasn't designed to carry rich content like images, detailed bundle descriptions or prices tailored to a traveller.

What NDC Actually Changes

The last row is the one most agents learn the hard way.

Offers and Orders in Plain English

A traditional booking is a PNR in the GDS plus a ticket. NDC models the sale differently: the airline answers a search with offers, you pick one, and it becomes an order held by the airline. IATA's NDC certification is organised around these messages. Level 2 covers offer management, meaning shopping requests and responses. Level 3 adds order management, so you can create and view orders. Level 4 adds full order servicing, including reshopping for changes. IATA certifies airlines that deploy an NDC API and sellers and aggregators that consume one. When a vendor says it is "Level 3 certified", it's telling you what the connection can do, and whether servicing is included is worth asking about.

How Agents Reach NDC Content

• Through your GDS. Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport have all built NDC connections that deliver airline content in their own screens. Amadeus reported 35 airlines live with NDC-sourced content on its platform at the end of 2025, up from four in 2022, reaching around 50,000 travel sellers in 168 markets.
• Through an aggregator or TMC tool. Third-party platforms connect to airline NDC interfaces and present them alongside other content.
• Through an airline's own agent channel. Some carriers let agencies book directly, with settlement through the usual ARC or BSP route.

Which of these you have depends on your GDS subscription, your host agency and your market, so the first step is to ask what you actually have switched on. Our GDS comparison covers how the three major systems differ.

Why Airlines Are Pushing This

NDC gives airlines control over how their products are displayed, and lets them sell richer bundles and personalised prices, which the older channel couldn't do as well. It also lets them lower their dependence on GDS distribution fees. Airlines also argue that NDC bookings generate more ancillary revenue. Lufthansa Group, for example, has claimed about three times the ancillary attachment rate on NDC.

How much is sold this way depends on who is counting. Lufthansa Group said in June 2026 that half its indirect bookings now go through NDC, and cited roughly one in five indirect tickets globally as NDC. Treat these as airline-reported figures rather than an independent measure, and note that adoption is very uneven between airlines, regions and agency types.

The Commercial Pressure Behind It

Airlines have used several levers to move agents over, and you may feel them whichever channel you use.

• Surcharges on GDS bookings. Air France-KLM has applied and repeatedly postponed a per-segment charge on EDIFACT bookings, with reported amounts rising from 13 euros to 24 euros per segment. It has offered reduced rates to agencies that sign NDC transition agreements. Terms change often, so check the current position.
• Content only available through NDC. American Airlines pulled many fares from traditional distribution in 2023, then reversed course in early June 2024 after agents and trade bodies complained about comparison shopping, changes and rebooking. Air France-KLM removed some short- and medium-haul "Light" fares from traditional GDS channels, leaving them NDC-only, according to trade reports in 2024.
• Incentives. Some airlines offer better fares, bundles or commission terms to agencies that book through their preferred channel.

The American Airlines episode matters because it showed the limits of the pressure. When servicing doesn't work for agencies, the airline blinked.

Servicing: Where NDC Gets Difficult

Booking an NDC fare is usually the easy part. Changing it is where agents run into trouble. Travelport's published NDC servicing guidance gives a flavour: some airlines let you cancel an NDC order only within the void period, some don't support cancelling a ticketed booking at all, and a ticket for a fare that has been removed from EDIFACT cannot be exchanged in the GDS and has to be handled with the airline. If a booking is changed on the airline's own website, ownership transfers to the airline, the change isn't reflected in your PNR, and you may not get schedule-change updates through the GDS.

ARC's Q&A with British Airways shows the other side: with enough work, servicing is possible. Post-sale refunds and exchanges were live through the NDC APIs, and ARC set up a lockdown so that NDC bookings must be changed through those APIs rather than directly in agency reporting. Whether your tool can do what the airline's API allows is the real question.

Debit memo rules also differ. BA has said it does not issue fare-related ADMs on NDC bookings, but other kinds can still be raised, and other airlines' NDC policies list exceptions such as fraud and fare misapplication. Read the policy of each airline before you depend on it. See our overview of common GDS challenges for the wider picture.

Does NDC Replace the PNR?

Not today, and not in one step. IATA describes NDC as based on Offer and Order management, and says NDC 24.1 "paves the way" for a transition to Offers and Orders. Lufthansa Group has said it is preparing Offer and Order technology as the step beyond NDC. In practice, most agencies run a hybrid: traditional bookings in familiar PNR form, NDC bookings as airline orders that often appear in your GDS in a PNR-like form, sometimes with an airline reference alongside. For a clearer view of what a PNR holds, see what is a PNR. And for what a GDS does, what is a GDS.

A Worked Example

Imagine an agent, Sam, whose client wants a return flight to Frankfurt. The airline's website shows a fare that is a bit cheaper than what Sam found in the GDS. Sam does four things. First, compare the fare families: the website fare turns out to include no checked bag, while the GDS fare does. Second, ask the GDS or host agency whether that airline's NDC content is available to the office, and what it costs to book and service. Third, check what happens on a change: can Sam make it in the GDS, or only by calling the airline? Fourth, tell the client the trade-offs and let them decide. The cheaper fare wins if the client will never change it. The GDS fare wins if flexibility or a single point of servicing matters.

Choosing Between NDC and Traditional Content

• Choose NDC content when it is the only way to get a fare or bundle the client wants, when you've tested servicing with that airline, and when the client's plans are firm.
• Choose traditional GDS content when flexibility matters, when the trip involves several airlines or interline segments (see what is interlining), or when your NDC servicing path is unproven.
• Test before relying on it. Make a low-value booking and try to change and refund it, so the first time isn't in front of a stranded client.

What Travel Agents Should Do About It

1. Ask your GDS and host agency which NDC airlines you can book and service today. Many have direct connections or integrate through the GDS, and some are still waiting on one or the other.
2. Learn the servicing rules per airline, including void windows, exchanges, refunds and who handles schedule changes.
3. Keep your own record. Record how and where every booking was made, because an NDC booking changed elsewhere may not update your PNR.
4. Watch schedule changes on NDC bookings more closely, since notifications may not reach you through the GDS.

NDC isn't something to panic about, but it is changing how airline content reaches you, steadily. If your NDC booking appears in your GDS in PNR form, you can paste it into a converter like any other. You can read IATA's own description on its NDC programme page.