The Startup That Could Bring Airline Ticket Shopping to Amazon

There's a widely-used data-sharing tool that airlines have been slow to adopt, even though it could improve their fare distribution to retailers like Amazon. So a London-based startup called Duffel launched a platform on Thursday to try to change that dynamic. Duffel's new platform strives to help about 20 airlines — including American Airlines, Lufthansa Group, British Airways, Emirates, Cathay Pacific, Transavia, United Airlines, and Air Canada — distribute their fares to third-parties like retailers, banks, and travel companies. While small, Duffel's effort hints at a possible broader wave of development in travel's digital economy. First, some context: Whether you're a hotel or cruise line looking to sell flights or a company like Amazon experimenting with selling flights, you might prefer to use application programming interfaces, or APIs. Software engineers have long relied on APIs in sectors such as advertising and financial technology, but traditional network airlines have only rarely used this data-sharing tool to distribute airfares. An API is like a data feed any company can plug into. If an airline creates a robust API, then any modern merchant can plug in and start selling. That means that a retailer like Amazon or a non-airline travel supplier such as Accor or Carnival could more easily sell flights as a sideline. The data-sharing technique could make the selling of flights outside of travel agencies more widespread. Some travel sellers like Google and Skyscanner are pushing airlines to make it standard practice. Yet practical issues, such as commercial terms, regulatory issues, and customer servicing, have held up the adoption of the data-sharing method for selling plane tickets. A case in point: Rather than use APIs from airlines, Amazon instead outsources its sales of plane tickets in India to online travel agency Cleartrip, which