BCD Travel and American Airlines have accelerated their New Distribution Capability integration, expanding direct airline content and servicing options for corporate clients at a time when NDC usage is climbing sharply across the agency channel.
Reinvigorated Partnership Targets Modern Airline Retailing
BCD Travel has positioned itself as a leading adopter of American Airlines’ New Distribution Capability, reinforcing a partnership that both companies say is now central to how corporate air content will be sourced and serviced. Announced this week, the accelerated integration means BCD can connect more deeply with American’s NDC APIs to pull richer fares, ancillaries and tailored offers into its global point of sale for managed travel programs.
The move comes as airlines worldwide push to shift more distribution to NDC, a technology standard developed by the International Air Transport Association to enable more dynamic retailing than legacy global distribution systems typically allow. American has been among the most aggressive large carriers in rebalancing content, bringing certain fares and benefits into NDC channels while limiting access through traditional pipes.
For BCD, renewing and expanding its collaboration with one of the world’s largest carriers is designed to reassure corporate travel buyers that their travelers will not be disadvantaged as distribution modernizes. The travel management company highlights that its objective is not simply to connect, but to make NDC content consistent, scalable and reliable across geographies and points of sale.
Executives at both firms describe the new phase of work as less about experimentation and more about industrializing NDC for the corporate market, with performance, servicing and policy controls at the forefront. That emphasis directly addresses concerns voiced by buyers over the past two years as airlines accelerated content shifts.
Corporate Travelers Gain Access to Fuller American Airlines Content
The enhanced integration means BCD’s corporate clients will see a broader set of American Airlines offers when shopping and booking through approved channels, including content that may not be available in legacy systems. This can include continuous pricing, branded fares, paid seat selection, bundled ancillaries and other flight options that airlines increasingly use to differentiate their products.
By tapping directly into American’s NDC storefront, BCD can surface these options alongside traditional fares, while still applying corporate policy rules, negotiated discounts and approval workflows. For travelers, the experience should more closely resemble booking directly on the airline website in terms of choice and transparency, but within the managed program’s guardrails.
American has repeatedly signaled that its NDC strategy is about more personalized and flexible offers, especially for high-yield segments like corporate and premium leisure. With BCD reporting a high percentage of NDC bookings already flowing through its systems, the deeper collaboration effectively gives American a larger, better-optimized corporate shelf for those offers.
Travel managers, meanwhile, stand to gain improved visibility into spend on ancillaries, which have traditionally been hard to track when purchased outside approved booking paths. Richer data from NDC transactions can feed reporting, supplier negotiations and policy fine-tuning, tightening control at a time of rising average ticket prices and stronger demand for premium cabins.
Servicing Reliability Emerges as Critical Test for NDC
While richer content is a strong selling point, corporate buyers have consistently said that servicing is the real test of NDC readiness. Trip changes, refunds, disruptions and ticket exchanges must work as smoothly as they do in traditional channels, or the operational burden can quickly outweigh any potential benefits.
BCD and American say the accelerated integration specifically targets these servicing pain points, aiming to ensure that agents can modify and support NDC-issued tickets using familiar workflows. That includes handling schedule changes, voluntary rebooking and irregular operations events without forcing travelers or arrangers to abandon the managed channel.
This focus comes as agency-served NDC volumes climb. Data from Airlines Reporting Corp. shows that NDC transactions accounted for about one fifth of all ARC-settled agency tickets in January 2026, up from the mid-teens a year earlier, underscoring that what was once a niche pilot environment is now meaningful at scale.
For global corporations that rely on 24/7 support, duty of care and centralized data, any gap in servicing NDC content can translate into real risk. By jointly investing in making these processes more robust, BCD and American are seeking to position their partnership as a benchmark for how NDC can function in a complex corporate ecosystem rather than only in simple point-to-point leisure itineraries.
Open Travel Platform Strategy Underpins BCD’s Multi-Source Model
Behind the American Airlines announcement sits a broader BCD strategy to act as an aggregator of multi-source content, blending direct connects, traditional global distribution systems and specialist platforms into a single, rules-driven environment. The company points to its open travel platform as the engine that allows it to ingest and normalize offers from NDC, low-cost carriers, rail providers, hotel aggregators and private channels.
For corporate clients, that architecture is intended to deliver choice without sacrificing comparability. Travelers can see multiple fare types and carriers side by side, while the underlying technology applies business rules on preferred suppliers, sustainability targets, cabin eligibility and advance purchase windows. In practice, this helps ensure that American’s NDC fares are evaluated in the same decision framework as content from other airlines and channels.
Such a model reflects how quickly the supply landscape is fragmenting. Airlines that once relied almost entirely on global distribution systems are now actively steering traffic to direct APIs and NDC-based aggregators, and non-air suppliers are following a similar path. Travel management companies are racing to stitch these sources together in ways that preserve duty of care and data quality.
BCD’s executives characterize their American Airlines integration as proof that this multi-source approach can be scaled, rather than configured only for a handful of early adopters. As NDC penetration rises, the ability to manage thousands of daily transactions from multiple direct airline connections, including American, is becoming a core differentiator among global agencies.
Market Context: Record Agency Sales and Rising NDC Adoption
The timing of the BCD and American Airlines announcement coincides with a notable milestone for the agency channel. ARC data released this week shows that U.S.-based travel agency air ticket sales reached approximately 10 billion dollars in January 2026, the highest monthly total on record since the organization began tracking sales.
Total passenger trips booked through agencies climbed to more than 28 million for the month, with both domestic and international journeys posting year-on-year gains. Average ticket prices also rose, including a notable increase in economy-class fares, reflecting robust demand and airline pricing power at the start of the year.
Within those figures, NDC’s share of agency-settled transactions has continued its upward trajectory. Around one in five tickets processed through ARC in January involved NDC, compared with a significantly smaller share only a year earlier. That shift underscores why large travel management companies and airlines are moving quickly to formalize and scale their NDC partnerships.
For corporate travel managers, the data highlights a landscape in which spend is growing, content is fragmenting and technology standards are evolving. In that environment, initiatives like the BCD and American collaboration are likely to be closely watched as indicators of how well the managed channel can keep pace with airline-driven change.
Implications for Corporate Travel Programs and Buyers
Corporate travel programs stand at the intersection of traveler expectations, cost control and duty-of-care obligations. The expanded American Airlines NDC connection via BCD Travel directly touches all three, promising a broader range of products, potentially sharper pricing and better tracking of what is purchased and flown.
From a traveler experience perspective, the ability to access branded fares, extra-legroom seating, Wi-Fi, bags and other ancillaries at the time of booking aligns the managed channel with what is available on airline sites. That reduces the incentive for employees to book out of policy in search of better options, helping programs maintain compliance.
On the cost side, richer offer data and improved post-ticketing information can inform negotiations and category management. Travel managers may be able to steer demand more precisely toward American in markets where the carrier offers a compelling mix of base fares and ancillary value, while still respecting broader network and traveler needs.
Critically, program owners are also watching how NDC affects risk management. A consolidated view of traveler itineraries, regardless of whether tickets were issued via NDC or traditional channels, is essential for responding to disruptions or emergencies. BCD emphasizes that its integration is designed so that NDC bookings are fully visible in reporting and duty-of-care tools, an assurance many buyers will seek to validate in practice.
Next Steps in Scaling NDC Across the Corporate Ecosystem
Looking ahead, BCD Travel and American Airlines are framing this phase of collaboration as a foundation rather than an endpoint. Both parties signal that they expect to extend NDC capabilities across more markets, traveler segments and use cases, including more complex itineraries and higher-touch servicing scenarios.
Industry observers note that a key measure of success will be how easily multinational corporations can deploy the expanded content and workflows across their global footprints. Local market regulations, tax rules and refund practices can all complicate NDC servicing, requiring close cooperation between airline and agency technology teams.
The broader travel technology ecosystem will also play a role. Online booking tools, expense platforms and mid-office systems need to be fully aligned with NDC flows in order for corporate buyers to realize the promised benefits in policy enforcement, analytics and reconciliation. Many of these vendors are in parallel stages of NDC development, which can create dependencies and timetables beyond any one airline-agency pair.
Even so, the renewed push from BCD and American suggests that the corporate travel sector is moving past early pilot phases and into a period where NDC is treated as standard infrastructure. For corporate clients, that shift will likely translate into more choice and more complexity at the same time, with the value of trusted intermediaries and robust technology stacks higher than ever.