imo the "targets" of NDC are twofold:
1. TA's, GDS's and OTA's - basically any higher cost channel to the airline to sell their fares/product. (Now, if TA's consent to, or have access to NDC via an airline portal that wouldn't count because it would still be the lowest cost direct channel to the airline. The problem with this is that the TA's potentially face multiple portals for NDC to each carrier, or possibly groups of carriers - which clearly is not going to be very practical if each carrier goes their own way. Of course third parties potentially get comission on sales - though this has hugely been wound back in recent years to nearly nothing (iirc QF used to pay 5% to AU based TA's, and dropped it to 1% - which doesn't make it very attractive to TA's)
2. Customers - airlines would prefer customers get away from consolidators, aggregators and the like and go via their own sales channels (eg: website, app etc) using NDC. Less cost to them and they directly engage with the customer under their control - eg: potentially link in with your loyalty scheme such as Frequent Flyer membership - such as points+pay deals, upgrades, direct status benefits and so on. Plus of course being able to more tailor product offers to each customer at a more granular level.
QF does the basic version of wanting to get pax to their own channels - eg free seat selection for direct bookings and that kind of thing. We can only expect this kind of thing to increase.
The other thing is that if the airlines can get themselves OFF the legacy platforms like the GDS's as they pull as much to their own platforms, it's not only lower cost, but allows them to customise far more without reliance on what the legacy platforms can and can't support.
Bonza, for example, is probably where the legacy carriers wish they could be at - Bonza ONLY deal with their customers directly via their app. You can't get their fares anywhere else. Southwest was the original (AFAIK) of this kind of idea, as ever since they started they pretty much have avoided other platforms.
The biggest problem for all the legacy carriers, apart from dealing with corporates, people with complex booking needs and the legacy GDS's is 1) integration with global partners (something the GDS's enable at the most basic levels. This also applies to things like ATP (See ATOCO the basic central fare filing interchange and also the clearinghouse I believe for things like interline ticketing and so on such that airlines get their part of joint ticket sales and so on). I'm not sure how NDC fits into this. It's all very well for say AA or QF or whoever to implement NDC for themselves, but how about for the future?
I could see airline groupings, such as those in JV's, groups like IAG and even alliances like OW, Star etc to potentially set up inter-partner channels between eachother but that kind of thing is probably a long way off.
Now this is all OT to the AA issue of this thread, but it's certainly a potentially huge change coming through that has reprocussions in many different areas.
