ATPCO to Update Industry Collaboration Framework with Two New Councils

(17 Nov 2021)  ATPCO has formed five global councils that are focused on key areas of interest to the aviation industry: Offer Content, Distribution & Infrastructure, Customer Care, Settlement and Market Tools.

The five councils will comprise 51 industry executives with a mission to identify, prioritize and implement new ATPCO data, standards and technology to enable airlines to improve their digital retailing and solve customer pain points.

Three of the councils - Offer Content, Distribution & Infrastructure, Customer Care - launched earlier this year and have already achieved consensus and strong engagement among industry participants.

British Airways Airbus A320 reg: G-TTNB. Picture by Steven Howard of TravelNewsAsia.com

Those councils identified Dynamic Offer Creation (DOC), New Distribution Capability (NDC), and Next Generation Storefront (NGS) as industry initiatives that underline the importance of consistent, automated airline policy content through all channels in today’s increasingly complex airline retailing environment.

The Customer Care Council is applying the lessons learned from the COVID19 pandemic, including the industry need for a fully automated and flexible method of servicing passengers.

They have set a goal of 100% automation of all changes so airlines can better articulate their change and refund policies, agencies can better serve their customers, and consumers can have more certainty on what happens when changes to their travel schedule occur.

The Settlement and Market Tools Councils will launch in early 2022.

“We realized that to be more focused on standards and products that deliver the most value in each of the five key areas, we needed to update our industry collaboration framework,” said David Smith, Head of Industry Standards at ATPCO. “The new targeted advisory councils will facilitate far better focus, agility, and innovation, and create better opportunities for former AAC members to take the right actions at the right time to ensure faster speed to market. These councils reinforce ATPCO’s role as an industry utility to lead this transition seamlessly, with council guidance, through standards, data, and automation.”

The five new councils are an evolution of the ATPCO Advisory Council (AAC) created in 2013, and are made up of senior representatives from airlines, technology providers, and industry organizations.

The new council structure is more agile and allows experts to focus on the topics they know best so that we are prioritizing the right actions as an industry.

Each councils’ goal will be to reduce technical friction, remove manual processes, reduce industry costs, and resolve inconsistent applications of standards across the industry in a collaborative way, while building industry consensus.

ATPCO infrastructure is essential to consistent airline policy execution, and the company believes these councils can help shape, scale and transition the industry in a practical and interoperable way, and gain industry consensus.

Each council will meet 4-6 times a year and be led by these ATPCO-nominated business sponsors:

- Offer Content Council: The business sponsor is Keith Wallis, Senior Director Distribution & Payments at Air Canada. This council is responsible for content needed to create airline offers, and consumer visualization standards, including dynamic offers and NGS.

- Distribution & Infrastructure Council: The business sponsor is Derek Adair, Vice President Commercial Development and Innovation at Delta Air Lines. This council is responsible for airline distribution standards including pricing, retailing, automation, and adoption of NDC.

- Customer Care Council: The business sponsor is Hervé Prezet, Vice President Industry and Expertise, Amadeus. This council is responsible for standards that enable the consistent application of airline customer servicing policies, including 100% automation of change.

- Settlement Council: The business sponsor is Jerry Fonacier, Director of Revenue Accounting at Hawaiian Airlines. This council is responsible for standards relating to settlement, including single source of automated tax data, and ONE Order.

- Market Tools Council: The business sponsor is Stefania Di Gesu, Product Support Manager, British Airways. This council is responsible for selective consultative user groups for ATPCO commercial products that bring standards to life, including the efficient capture of airline policy content.

“These new councils will be a more efficient and productive way of working, not just for British Airways, but for all airlines, subscribers, and system providers alike,” said Stefania Di Gesu. “The council structure ATPCO has created will resolve inconsistencies in industry standards application and allow greater innovation to thrive, focused on the good of all, not just some, which in the end will lead to customer-centric advancements that benefit passengers.”

ATPCO will be leading more discussions with the councils focused on key initiatives that use ATPCO’s neutral position in the industry and lean on its data and industry standards.

The AAC member organizations are the founding members of the new councils, and ATPCO has said that it will conduct a nomination and election for additional council representatives in 2022 to ensure the broadest possible participation.