ATPCO Launches Five New Councils To Build Consensus

ATPCO has formed five new global councils focused on key areas of interest to the industry and which include:

• Offer Content
• Distribution & Infrastructure
• Customer Care
• Settlement
• 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 – were launched earlier this year and have already achieved consensus and strong engagement among industry participants.

These 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 COVID-19 pandemic, including the industry need for a fully automated and flexible method of servicing passengers.

It has also 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.

David Smith, head of industry standards at ATPCO, explained that: “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.”

Smith continued: “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.  The 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.

Each council will meet 4 to 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.

Go to www.atpco.net for more.