NDC Aggregation Explained: What European Travel Agencies Need to Know

What Is NDC?

New Distribution Capability (NDC) is an IATA data exchange standard that enables airlines to distribute rich content and offers directly to travel agencies, bypassing or supplementing traditional GDS channels. Built on XML/JSON messaging, NDC replaces the decades-old EDIFACT protocol that limits airlines to basic fare and schedule information.

Airlines push NDC because it allows them to control the offer presentation, sell ancillaries (seat selection, baggage, meals) as part of the initial shopping flow, and implement dynamic pricing without GDS constraints. For airlines, NDC represents a shift from commodity distribution to retail-style merchandising.

Current Adoption State in Europe

NDC adoption has accelerated significantly. Over 65 airlines hold IATA NDC certification at various capability levels. European carriers lead global adoption, with approximately 41% of NDC-certified airlines based in Europe. By end of 2024, NDC transactions represented roughly 20% of ARC-reported sales in major markets.

Lufthansa Group was among the first to make NDC mandatory for accessing their lowest fares, followed by British Airways, Air France-KLM, and others. Turkish Airlines, SAS, Finnair, and ITA Airways have all launched NDC programmes with varying levels of content availability.

The Version Fragmentation Problem

One of the biggest practical challenges with NDC is version fragmentation. IATA has released 11 schema versions since the standard began, from early versions through to the current 21.3. Version 17.2 remains widely used despite being technically outdated, because many airlines built their initial implementations on it.

Beyond version differences, each airline implements NDC differently. The standard defines a message structure but leaves significant room for interpretation on business rules, error handling, and data mapping. An agency connecting directly to 10 airlines might face 10 different API behaviours, authentication methods, and response formats even within the same schema version.

GDS Surcharges Driving Urgency

The financial pressure to adopt NDC comes primarily from GDS surcharges that airlines impose on bookings made through traditional channels. These surcharges make GDS content significantly more expensive:

Lufthansa Group: EUR 18-23 per segment depending on the carrier (Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, Brussels Airlines). This was the first major GDS surcharge, introduced in 2015, and set the precedent for the industry.

Turkish Airlines: $24 per ticket for GDS bookings, making NDC access essential for agencies selling Turkish Airlines content in competitive markets.

Emirates: $14-25 per booking depending on the market and fare class.

British Airways: GBP 13 per sector for bookings not made through NDC-connected channels.

For a mid-sized European agency processing thousands of bookings monthly, these surcharges can add up to tens of thousands of euros in additional costs annually.

Integration Strategies: Aggregator vs Direct

Agencies face a fundamental choice in how they access NDC content:

Direct airline integration means building and maintaining a separate API connection to each airline. This gives maximum control over the booking flow but requires dedicated development resources for each carrier, ongoing maintenance as airlines update their APIs, and separate certification processes.

NDC aggregators provide a single integration point that connects to multiple airlines. The aggregator handles version differences, authentication, error handling, and data normalisation. Agencies get access to many airlines through one API, at the cost of some flexibility and potential latency overhead.

For most European agencies, aggregation is the practical choice. The cost and complexity of maintaining direct integrations with 10-20+ carriers is prohibitive unless you have a dedicated technology team.

Major NDC Aggregators in the Market

Several NDC aggregators serve the European market, each with different airline coverage, pricing models, and technical approaches:

AirGateway is a Spain-based aggregator offering connections to 50+ NDC airlines with a focus on European carriers. They provide a unified API and agent desktop tool for managing NDC bookings alongside GDS content.

Verteil connects to major carriers including Lufthansa Group, British Airways, and Singapore Airlines. They specialise in B2B distribution, providing NDC content to TMCs and consolidators.

TPConnects is a Dubai-based aggregator with strong coverage of Middle Eastern and Asian carriers, plus growing European airline support. They offer both API access and a booking management platform.

Duffel takes a developer-first approach with a modern REST API that abstracts both NDC and GDS content into a single interface. They focus on technology companies building travel products rather than traditional agencies.

Managing Dual GDS and NDC Content

The transition to NDC is not binary. For the foreseeable future, agencies will operate in a hybrid environment where some content comes through GDS and some through NDC. This creates practical challenges:

Agents need a single view that shows both GDS and NDC fares for comparison. Mid-office systems must process bookings from both channels with consistent financial handling. Reporting needs to aggregate revenue and commissions regardless of the booking source. Servicing (changes, cancellations, refunds) follows different workflows depending on the channel.

GDS providers have responded by adding NDC content into their platforms. Amadeus offers NDC content through its Travel Platform, Sabre through its Beyond NDC programme, and Travelport through its NDC-enabled Smartpoint tool. However, this GDS-mediated NDC access may still carry distribution fees that offset some of the surcharge savings.

How Aurora Unifies NDC and GDS Content

Aurora addresses the NDC fragmentation challenge by providing a unified inventory layer that normalises content from both NDC airlines and GDS sources. Airlines connected through NDC appear alongside GDS-sourced flights in a single search response, with transparent pricing that includes or excludes surcharges for direct comparison.

The platform handles NDC version differences internally, maintaining connections across multiple schema versions and translating airline-specific behaviours into consistent booking flows. When an airline updates their NDC implementation, Aurora absorbs the change without requiring downstream system modifications.

For servicing, Aurora routes change and cancellation requests to the appropriate channel (NDC direct or GDS) based on the original booking source, presenting a consistent interface to agents regardless of the underlying distribution path.