Considering his past as an airline distribution
maverick in the early 2000s at Orbitz and G2 SwitchWorks, Alex Zoghlin wasn't a
status-quo choice to lead ATPCO.
Since becoming CEO of the airline-owned fare-filing
and data services company in early 2021, Zoghlin has overseen some notable
moves. This year's sunsetting of the NDC Exchange and an ambitious commitment
on dynamic airline offers are among them.
The decision to sunset the NDC Exchange by year-end
left some airlines, including Air Canada and Southwest Airlines, scrambling for
alternatives. It also left some travel sellers in a lurch.
The sunsetting is indicative of Zoghlin's view of
ATPCO as an "industry utility," rather than a development shop for
minimally used products—no matter how useful to a coterie of adopters.
Zoghlin regularly uses the term "utility"
for ATPCO, which he attests exists for an ecosystem—"not for a carrier,
not for a set of carriers, not for carriers only, not for GDSs only," he
said. "How do we make it work for everybody?"
ATPCO for years had maintained the NDC Exchange to
help airlines extend their application programming interfaces to multiple
travel sellers through a single New Distribution Capability-based pipe. The NDC
Exchange helped airlines and sellers with API translation, maintenance and
normalization, with an aim to ease NDC adoption.
Still, the airline industry is crowded with NDC
aggregators and API builders. Why should ATPCO—a "utility" like a
waterworks or an electric company—be in that crowd?
Even as it moved on from the NDC Exchange, ATPCO
opened the platform's source code free of charge. "We are going to be
giving away, essentially, the platform that we built for anybody that has
interest in it," said Zoghlin.
Meanwhile, ATPCO this year also committed to an bold
goal for the airline industry to dynamically generate 80 percent of flight
offers by 2026.
Today, airlines file fares through ATPCO, but
Zoghlin said many don't take full advantage of its capabilities. He said ATPCO
is keen to show them the path toward "modern airline retailing."
If the past is static fare filing and the future
is dynamic offers, then ATPCO—helmed by Zoghlin—is the bridge.
While the goal will take a collective, Zoghlin
said the onus is on ATPCO "to create tools, products and capabilities to
actually enable this." These began taking shape this year through
ATPCO-led proof-of-concept work and industry collaboration groups.