Finnair, a Oneworld alliance member that is also a joint-venture partner of American Airlines, has been one of the airline industry's primary champions of NDC technology. But this spring, the airline abandoned a plan to stop distributing via legacy Edifact GDS technology by the end of 2025. Aviation editor Robert Silk spoke with Jenni Suomela, Finnair's vice president of global sales and channel management, and Pasi Kuusisto, its general manager for North America, about the airline's NDC plans.
Jenni Suomela
Q: How has your NDC strategy changed now that you won't halt legacy GDS sales next year?
Jenni Suomela: NDC is really a key part of Finnair's commercial strategy. The pace of change has been slower than we anticipated generally in the industry. But despite that we have continued firmly on the path of consistent actions toward modern distribution. The most recent step, one that has yielded great results, is we have removed domestic itineraries from Edifact.
Q: Has that hurt you with domestic travel agencies?
Suomela: No. How we scale NDC is based on collaboration with agencies, and even wider than that across the value chain, including partners like payment providers. To remove the domestic itineraries from Edifact, we had to solve all the bottlenecks we had around business segments, and we have done that via collaboration.
Pasi Kuusisto
Q: Remind readers of your NDC policies for U.S. tickets, including any Edifact content removal.
Pasi Kuusisto: We've only removed the equivalent of basic economy. The distribution cost is $15 per direction.
Q: Do you use dynamic pricing for NDC bookings?
Suomela: Yes, we have been expanding our dynamic pricing since last year and gradually rolling it out across our network. The majority of routes from North America might have additional price points but not additional products.
Q: What are your next steps?
Suomela: Globally, we want to carry our responsibility in pushing the change forward. In November, we will be removing intra-European itineraries in a few markets. In May of next year, we will be removing Classic [similar to economy] on intra-European routes fully from Edifact.
Q: Did Finnair feel an impact from the failure of American's aggressive NDC strategy, since they are a joint-venture partner of yours?
Suomela: We are all in the same boat, pushing NDC forward. It's definitely not easy, and the pace of change has been disappointing generally in the industry.
Q: It sounds like there is some frustration with your ability to get agencies on board with NDC.
Suomela: NDC is a complex topic. It requires every partner to change their processes. NDC originally was sold like you turn it on; you plug it in, and the world opens to you. It's not like that. It requires changes of processes, and that requires investment. We are continually struggling with how to allocate our scarce resources. That's a challenge for agencies too.
Q: What type of capabilities do you have now in terms of servicing, and where are there still shortfalls?
Suomela: I think we have been able to close the main gaps, which has been able to scale in the business channel segment. Servicing features like name change must be solved. That's one example. But items aren't game changers on their own. It's when they add up that it becomes too painful. And we have been able to close most of the gaps.