SAN DIEGO — IATA’s once controversial New Distribution Capability is moving ahead with all major players jumping on the bandwagon.

IATA’s World Passenger Symposium (WPS 2014) here saw collaboration between airlines, technology companies and the travel trade.

“During the two days of the conference, all three major global distribution systems providers expressed their desire to support any airline ready to distribute their content through their agency networks, using the NDC XML standard. In parallel, the main vendors of passenger service systems confirmed their plans to adapt their respective products in order to help their hosted airlines to implement NDC-based distribution with their channel partners; including low cost carriers,” said IATA.

“These announcements mark a definite turning point for the NDC program, as technology companies will play an essential role in industry adoption. With the candidate release of the NDC ‘end-to-end’ schemas now effective, we now all have the opportunity to make things happen and to build the next generation of airline distribution products and solutions, for the ultimate benefit of the customer.”

WPS 2014 also provided the platform for the launch of the NDC Innovation Fund in partnership with Travel Capitalist Ventures.

Following the release of the NDC Shopping schemas at WPS 2014, IATA has released the full set of NDC ‘end-to-end’ schemas (version 1.1.1), which support the business requirements for: NDC Shopping (including Interline Ancillary Shopping); NDC Order Management (Booking & Servicing) and NDC Payment & Ticketing.