The Normalised Curve: From Chaos to Connection in Airline Retailing
Normalisation is not the destination… It’s the foundation for efficiency, cost savings and innovation in
The ECTAA Travel Distribution Summit 2026 brought together airlines, travel sellers, technology providers and distribution experts to address a defining question for the industry: what comes next in airline distribution?
The conversation has clearly moved beyond whether NDC “works.” Adoption is growing, but the focus has shifted to operational maturity, servicing, cost control, AI enablement and the transition toward Offer & Order models.
Here are the key themes challenging the industry to ‘do better’ and shaping the next phase of airline retailing as discussed at the event.
Moving Beyond NDC
There was broad consensus that NDC has delivered on part of its original ambition: it has given airlines greater commercial flexibility and more control over how products are distributed and priced. The ability to move away from rigid legacy distribution models and introduce richer offers and continuous pricing is now well established.
However, progress has been uneven.
Across the industry, NDC volumes are now commonly reported in the 20–30% range of total sales for early adopters. Growth continues, particularly in corporate environments where adoption was initially slower. But the journey has not been frictionless.
The most consistent challenge remains servicing. Early implementations struggled with post-booking changes, refunds and operational workflows. While significant improvements have been made, the complexity created by multiple versions and inconsistent implementation has slowed true standardisation.
The industry discussion has therefore matured. The focus is no longer on which version is being used but on what the technology can actually do for sellers and travellers.
Low-cost Content is King
Air distribution is no longer defined solely by traditional full-service carrier models. Many LCCs operate highly effective retail strategies without relying on NDC standards, instead leveraging direct APIs, dynamic pricing engines, and controlled distribution models.
For travel sellers and technology platforms, this creates a significant challenge: normalising fundamentally different content types to remove access barriers.
LCC content is not just different in technical structure, but in merchandising logic, pricing behaviour, ancillaries, and fulfilment workflows. The complexity extends beyond the shopping display into mid- and back-office systems, where order storage, reporting, and servicing must function seamlessly if we want to see airline distribution that really serves the needs of travel sellers.
As a result, how we deliver content is becoming a core competency in modern airline retailing and LCCs are empowering agents to sell and manage their content with, or without NDC standards.
AI Opportunities
Artificial intelligence featured heavily in discussion, not as future speculation, but as a practical tool already reshaping distribution.
Three major opportunity areas stood out:
1. Content Normalisation & De-duplication
AI-driven normalisation is increasingly being used to streamline content, remove duplication and present clearer options to the end customer.
2. Traffic & Cost Management
Continuous pricing means that every search can trigger a live request to an airline system. Shopping volumes are growing rapidly, driving bandwidth consumption and cost concerns across the ecosystem. Yet this is an essential part of the process to enable OTAs and tour operators to dynamically package at scale.
Machine learning models are now being deployed to intelligently manage traffic, but this needs to accelerate to combat the rising costs of ‘shopping’.
3. Workflow Automation
AI also offers meaningful potential in post-booking servicing, reconciliation, and exception handling. Automation here may prove just as important as improvements in the shopping experience.
The consensus was clear: AI will be a key differentiator in who can scale modern retailing efficiently.
Offer to Order
The move away from legacy PNR-based systems toward a more flexible, retail-oriented architecture is gaining momentum. However, implementation remains fragmented and long-term. Full transformation across airline systems is expected to take years rather than months.
Offer & Order promises:
- Unified offer creation and pricing logic
- Integrated ancillary merchandising
- Simplified order management
- Improved alignment between distribution and fulfilment
But it also introduces integration complexity, transitional coexistence models, and new dependencies across technology partners.
Perhaps most importantly, Offer & Order reinforces the shift from transaction management to retail management.
Summary
The next phase of airline retailing is not about abandoning legacy systems overnight. It is about building a more flexible, intelligent and commercially sustainable distribution ecosystem.
Our message to the industry is simple: we must understand how OTAs and tour operators work and sell in order to build scalable technology that has widespread adoption. We cannot afford to fall into the trap of not listening to our end-users because we simply cannot afford the same mistakes as when NDC launched.
The conversation must start with “How do we build scalable retail capability across a fragmented landscape?”, and Paxport is committed to leading the transformation of global travel distribution by delivering groundbreaking customer-driven technology that redefines industry standards.
