A Fast Response System: Airline Shopping in an NDC World

The introduction of new distribution capability (NDC) has initiated the shift from highly scalable global distribution system (GDS) shopping to airline-specific shopping, enabling the creation of customized offers for each request. Airlines now face the challenging task of efficiently handling shopping requests and swiftly selecting priced itineraries with associated ancillary bundles. To ensure scalability, these responses must be generated within three seconds, including network latency. This calls for an integrated air shopping and offer management system that prioritizes speed and accuracy. With NDC, attribute-based shopping tailored to specific customer segments and the context of their trips will become the new norm. This chapter investigates techniques that can be adapted to optimize the speed of NDC-influenced shopping responses. Additionally, the significance of a seat map cache in facilitating seat-led shopping is explored. These enhancements in air shopping for the indirect channel also provide added support for unique features on the direct channel to accommodate NDC requests, such as inspirational shopping, budget shopping, and theme-based shopping.