Progressing and Expanding New Distribution Capability With Air France-KLM

Through our collaboration with Air France-KLM, we've identified a couple of key factors essential to accelerating progress with NDC.

Open communication is key to making NDC work for business travel.

Consistent communication with Air France-KLM has been instrumental in propelling NDC forward.

As Claire Faure, director of product strategy, air, explains, an ongoing dialogue with the airline group has been critical to aligning our strategies and enhancing the value we deliver to our corporate clients. During biweekly calls, we address bugs uncovered during bookings, plan for upcoming NDC launches in new countries, and identify gaps in fulfilling business travel requirements.

Since Amex GBT is testing NDC bookings with a focus on business travel, we can quickly identify issues that could affect our corporate clients and address them with Air France-KLM.

"When we see something that needs attention, we say, 'This has to be fixed because it's important for business travelers,'" explained Claire.

"We've seen a lot of progress over time with many issues being resolved because of this close alignment," she added.

Air France-KLM's willingness to address our customer concerns, drive key changes based on insights given and align on key priorities has allowed us to implement and service NDC fares that meet the needs of our clients.

CH2 Collaboration speeds up problem-solving.

Since NDC is still an evolving technology, challenges are common. As we've seen from our collaboration with Air France-KLM, resolving issues sometimes requires extensive back-and-forth to test changes and make sure everything is working as intended. However, these efforts ultimately pay off.

"When we first launched, the error rate on NDC content from Air France-KLM was twice what we were seeing at purchase versus established content," said Randy Bell, director of product management. "We couldn't understand why. We kept getting an error message to seek assistance from the help desk."

To get to the bottom of the issue, we sent Air France-KLM batches of test bookings so its teams could investigate. Eventually, the airline group saw that the issue stemmed from a mismatch in names linked to frequent flyer IDs. This discovery was particularly important for the business travel segment, which includes a high number of loyalty members.

Once the root cause was addressed, it was a simple fix.

"That's just one small example," Randy said. "By agreeing to work together, we solved the problem and cut the error rate immediately to parity."

By regularly collaborating to overcome the inevitable challenges of deploying an emerging technology, we're driving meaningful progress.

Giving our clients the freedom of choice

Through our alliance with Air France-KLM, we're making tremendous progress with NDC, paving the way for widespread expansion and adoption in 2025. This will empower our clients and their travelers with a broader array of content options, enabling them to make the best decisions aligned with their preferences and travel programs.

All the choices Air France-KLM offers - underpinned by our exceptional support and service. Together, it's a winning combination.

Learn more about the progress we're making with NDC through our collaborative effort.