In 2025, ATPCO will celebrate 60 years as the experts behind airline retailing. It really does amaze me that this organization has quietly evolved and grown along with the industry. As a kid, I vividly remember pouring through ATPCO tariff books at my mom’s office where she worked as a travel agent, a foreshadowing of my future career. Since then, ATPCO has evolved to become the stewards of airline fare and offer data, supporting billions of offers every day, along with supporting data standards, merchandising, and so much more. I couldn’t be more proud of the work we do here as we develop solutions that will support airlines in serving flight shoppers for the next 60 years.
ATPCO has constantly innovated in the high-speed and high-volume world of digital flight retailing, providing access to airline product data in real time as airlines work to deliver dynamic offers personalized to travelers’ needs. We are now on the cusp of a new era of flight shopping, and ATPCO has the data and the tools to support this.
We are a global leader, enabling industry innovation for modern airline retailing. In addition, we help foster a fair market that supports not only all airlines equally but flight shoppers as well. ATPCO’s data and expertise also support the organizations facilitating flight shopping and air travel and the relevant regulatory bodies. We are dedicated to collaborating with all the organizations and governments that participate in the retailing experience— from offer to order to reconciliation.
As a neutral entity, ATPCO provides essential airline data to reduce complexity and deliver network efficiencies through standards, technology, and effective governance, utilizing long-established procedures and processes.
Some common misconceptions about ATPCO
In my last few years at ATPCO, I have been surprised by some misconceptions about what ATPCO does and does not do. Our 60th anniversary is a fitting time to set the record straight, as we will remain a critical partner of not only airlines, but channels, technology providers, governments, and many other organizations for years to come. ATPCO’s data and products are designed for economies of scale—while ATPCO collects and distributes fare and offer data, our mission is to do so in a way that increases transparency for airlines and choice for consumers.
Occasionally, I’ve heard about a case from 30 years ago in some people’s misunderstanding with ATPCO. In 1994, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) identified a small loophole in our pricing system that could have allowed price signaling to occur. An airline could publish a price and then pull the fare before a customer could buy it, potentially signaling another airline to change its prices. And although we had no knowledge of airlines doing this, ATPCO worked with the DOJ to close that loophole and put a rule in place that shut signaling down for good. We eliminated the ability to pull a fare before it is presented to a customer. Today, that fix is still in place; it’s hard-coded into our system.
It is also important to note that ATPCO has no input into the prices individual airlines charge. Each airline makes its own pricing decisions, not ATPCO. However, those pricing decisions produce a huge volume of information. Imagine 440 airlines communicating their pricing and retailing intentions through nearly 100,000 travel agencies and systems without a standard way to process the information for pricing and retailing...it would be overwhelming.
Without any standards, consumers would be confused when trying to compare offers from different airlines, travel agencies could dispute information, and airlines would have difficulty creating consistent or competitive pricing policies. ATPCO enables each individual airline to express their prices (fares), policies (rules, fees, taxes, etc.), and products (ancillaries, brands, merchandising content) once, and have them applied consistently per each individual airline’s intent by all sales channels.
ATPCO’s value now and into the future is a company that
- Sets standards that drive economies of scale and industry innovation while maintaining consumer choice.
- Fosters transparency for airlines, sellers, and consumers with fair access to data.
- Focuses on collaboration with an inclusive process across all industry parties, including governments and industry organizations.
- Acts as a single point of contact to streamline required changes across the industry.
Airline standards: An absolute necessity
Our solutions set standards that enable the accurate, automated display of an airline’s fares in pricing systems, the automation of ticket changes and refunds, and the display of accurate flight amenity information in airline direct and third-party sales channels.
An essential part of ATPCO’s mission is to assist the airline industry in complying with regulatory requirements. Accordingly, ATPCO devotes substantial resources to working with airlines to develop standards that harmonize with IATA’s industry standards, as well as solutions that facilitate compliance with new regulations across the globe as they come into effect.
ATPCO standards help with
- Airline offer content: Standards related to airline offer creation, such as dynamic offers and core pricing functionality, so each airline’s fares show accurately in all sales channels.
- Distribution and infrastructure: Standards related to distribution, such as NDC at scale and alignment of standards application.
- Airline offer presentation: Standards related to presentation to the customer, such as Modern Airline Retailing Attributes and shop filters, allowing customers to search for flights on specific criteria in addition to price and schedule.
- Customer care: Standards related to changes and refunds, such as 100% automation of airline change policies and tax refund rules.
Fostering transparency across the airline industry
ATPCO makes it possible for airlines to do business efficiently and effectively. As a central data repository and resource, we deliver transparency that helps airlines of every size and from every country compete for the good of customers and for the economies of countries around the world.
One reason there are many new airlines emerging recently that provide lower fares or serve smaller markets is they can compete fairly and have access to fare data that ensures they aren’t at a disadvantage to global leaders. This is good for the industry and for flight shoppers.
ATPCO’s operations are also good for customers. We work with airlines, GDSs, aggregators, and government bodies around the world to ensure that pricing data is used effectively to help shoppers buy the right fare. This means that fares and offers need to provide transparent information that is easy to understand and compare on airlines’ own sites and on aggregator and partner sites, as well as through the vast network of travel agencies. It is because of our commitment to quality, transparency, and innovation we continue to be an integral part of the airline pricing ecosystem even as it evolves into a high-speed, dynamically-optimized version of what existed back in 1994.
Collaborating now and in the future
We look at collaboration as the antidote to collusion. Rather than enabling a few powerful entities to define the process, we support all voices equally to create an outcome that delivers for everyone. No individual airline's business practices are ever discussed, and ATPCO adheres to all laws and guidelines while creating and updating our standards. These outcomes provide the best shopping experience possible for the consumer.
As we review the strides our industry has made in making flight shopping easier, more transparent, and more understandable, we can collectively feel proud of the work we have accomplished together. Consumers should not have to go to multiple websites to understand what product and service they will receive. In the future world of dynamic offers and orders, the work that ATPCO does will become even more important as more bundles, products, and personalized offers become available.
From paper books of fares to cloud-based AI data that is updated in real time, ATPCO has stood the test of time. We are still at the center of flight retailing because of our steadfast adherence to best practices, our neutral stance, and our open collaboration and support of airlines and their partners, governments, and everyone who shops for a flight.
