Air France-KLM and Amadeus Sign Landmark Distribution Deal
Skift Take
For years, airlines, travel agencies, and their technology partners acknowledged they could adopt more modern ways of selling plane tickets. The sticking point lately has been less technological than commercial. Thursday's deal is a seismic moment serving as a model for how the sector might afford to transition to the future.
Air France-KLM and Amadeus have agreed on commercial terms to make the airline group's plane tickets available for travel agents to book through the Amadeus travel platform via newer, more modern forms of selling, the companies said Thursday.
Travel agents piloting the technology will begin booking via the new method, the so-called new distribution capability (NDC), in the next three months.
Air France-KLM will add a surcharge of "a few euros" per ticket for agencies using the new content. Agencies will need to sign agreements with both Air France-KLM and Amadeus, and those deals will settle the precise commercial terms.
"This is a breakthrough agreement," said Robert Buckman, director, travel content sourcing, Americas, Amadeus.
The surcharge will be less than the $13 (€11) surcharge per one-way ticket Air France-KLM has officially charged agencies since 2018 for sales made through the global distribution systems like Amadeus and its peers Sabre and Travelport that didn't follow the more modern retailing method. In practice, many large resellers, such as Expedia Group and many large travel management compan
