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What if Amadeus buys IATA

Some of you have learned from my previous posts that I tend to be very direct and open and like to challenge the status quo.

So here’s my next challenge to the readership: Amadeus made some headlines recently due to the acquisition of other players – most notably Navitaire.

But what if Amadeus buys IATA?

In recent posts on various websites Amadeus challenged IATA standards. Standards, which help the airline industry and the consumers – offering new and optimized business processes for the future at a fraction of the cost of existing outdated processes and implemented on old legacy systems.

Wouldn’t it be convenient for Amadeus if they could set the standards themselves and implement whatever they think is best for their shareholders with a touch of “we do what’s best for the airline and consumers”? New standards like NDC and COT go against how GDS operate and how Amadeus (and other GDS) squeeze airlines. GDS don’t like to become obsolete. It is in their very own interest to delay the adaption of open standards such as NDC. Just imagine how much revenue all these GDS would lose if airline bookings bypass their big datacenters. Ohhh and btw stop arguing how important GDS are coz otherwise we wouldn’t be able to book HNL-KIX-MNL-HKG-TPE-SIN-KUL-PEK. The overhead to keep GDS alive to book such itineraries every 15 years is just not justified.

In a recent post available on the internet Amadeus claimed that NDC is a failure because it was defined by IATA (and its member airlines) and that Amadeus would know better what airlines and consumers want. Or in other words – Amadeus does not want open standards they can’t control – or open standards which would offer airlines better choices, more flexibility and lower distribution cost. What Amadeus wants is an Amadeus centric distribution world where Amadeus can control the business and due to its near-monopoly keep its shareholders happy and the airlines locked into a closed environment – sort of the Roman Empire of the airline industry. But we all know what happened 1539 years ago!