American Airlines, American Express Global Business Travel and Amadeus complete live NDC bookings

CHICAGO, Aug. 4, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- GBTA 2019 -- American Airlines, American Express Global Business Travel and Amadeus announce a milestone in travel retailing at the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) 2019 Convention. The companies have processed live bookings using American's NDC-enabled content with American Express Global Business Travel leveraging the new Amadeus Travel API and aiming to exercise its full functionality of end-to-end booking flow and servicing, including cancellations, exchanges and ancillaries, when capabilities reach scalable production levels.

This is an important step forward for airline retailing as three industry leaders demonstrate how collaboration is key to creating value and choice. American will look to gain full benefit of the Amadeus Travel Platform through which travel companies like American Express Global Business Travel can provide access to the world's most comprehensive and robust travel content.

"American is focused on offering our customers experiences that are unique to us and to them, and NDC puts us on that path," said Alison Taylor, Senior Vice President of Global Sales & Distribution at American. "Today's milestone is a significant step closer to making NDC-enabled content broadly available through Amadeus-powered travel companies."

"The possibilities we have in business travel have never been more exciting as we work with our customers and partners on the evolving distribution landscape," said Michael Qualantone, Executive Vice President of Global Supplier Relations for American Express Global Business Travel. "We are delivering solutions that will enhance access to content, improve transparency and shopping, and enable servicing capabilities with an end goal to drive value for our customers and partners."

The ability to drive end-to-end workflow for NDC-enabled content from American demonstrates the importance and value of industry standards that are required to reach the point where travel agencies can shop, book and service NDC bookings at scale and match current performance levels.

"We've now reached another critical milestone with two travel industry giants," said Gianni Pisanello, Vice President of the NDC [X] program at Amadeus. "As we continue to progress toward delivering on our commitment to make NDC work for all stakeholders, we believe that standardization across the industry is the single most important factor in easing implementation, broadening adoption, and creating a technical environment where airlines can explore new types of content, and travelers can readily consume it."

NDC [X] is a program dedicated to driving the industrialization of NDC and to support its use for all travel players. The program brings together all the NDC activities across Amadeus — as an IT provider and aggregator — and focuses on practical use cases of IATA's NDC standard, in a test and learn approach, to deliver improved capabilities for the industry.

About American Airlines Group

American Airlines offers customers 6,800 daily flights to more than 365 destinations in 61 countries from its hubs in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Washington, D.C. With a shared purpose of caring for people on life's journey, American's 130,000 global team members serve more than 200 million customers annually. Since 2013, American has invested more than $28 billion in its product and people and now flies the youngest fleet among U.S. network carriers, equipped with industry-leading high-speed Wi-Fi, lie-flat seats, and more inflight entertainment and access to power. American also has enhanced food and beverage options in the air and on the ground in its world-class Admirals Club and Flagship lounges. American was recently named a Five Star Global Airline by the Airline Passenger Experience Association and Airline of the Year by Air Transport World. American is a founding member of oneworld®, whose members serve 1,100 destinations in 180 countries and territories. Shares of American Airlines Group Inc. trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol AAL and the company's stock is included in the S&P 500. Learn more about what's happening at American by visiting news.aa.com and connect with American on Twitter @AmericanAir and at Facebook.com/AmericanAirlines.

About American Express Global Business Travel

American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) is the world's leading business partner for managed travel. We help companies and their employees prosper by making sure travellers are present where and when it matters. We keep global business moving with the powerful backing of 17,000 travel professionals in more than 140 countries. Companies of all sizes, and in all places, rely on GBT to provide travel management services, organise meetings and events, and deliver business travel consulting.

American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) is a joint venture that is not wholly owned by American Express Company or any of its subsidiaries (American Express). "American Express Global Business Travel," "American Express Meetings & Events," "American Express," and the American Express logo are trademarks of American Express and are used under limited license.

About Amadeus

Travel powers progress. Amadeus powers travel. Amadeus' solutions connect travelers to the journeys they want through travel agents, search engines, tour operators, airlines, airports, hotels, cars and railways.

We have developed our technology in partnership with the travel industry for over 30 years. We combine a deep understanding of how people travel with the ability to design and deliver the most complex, trusted, critical systems our customers need. We help connect over 1.6 billion people a year to local travel providers in over 190 countries.

We are one company, with 19,000 employees across 70 offices. We have a global mindset and a local presence wherever our customers need us.

Our purpose is to shape the future of travel. We are passionate in our pursuit of better technology that makes better journeys.
Amadeus is an IBEX 35 company, listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange under AMS.MC.

SOURCE Amadeus