FINNAIR NDC

Finnair is committed to industry-wide NDC development as one of IATA NDC Leaderboard airlines

NDC (New Distribution Capability) standard is a travel industry-wide initiative launched by IATA. With NDC technology agents are able to sell the full airline flight and ancillary product offering to their end customers in a more personalised way. In other words, NDC helps to transform indirect sales into the retailing experience that end customers appreciate.

Finnair is IATA Level 4 Certified in IATA NDC Program and an active member of IATA NDC Leaderboard of 21 airlines, who have committed to industry-wide NDC development.


Finnair NDC Partner Program

Finnair announced on 6th of May, 2019 renewal of its distribution strategy and launching of Finnair NDC Partner Program.

As a part of the distribution strategy renewal, Finnair will be introducing differentiated content for program participants in the following European Point of Commencement markets, effective from 1st of October, 2019 onwards: Finland, Germany, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom. The change will not affect travel commencing from other markets.

Travel agent partners joining Finnair NDC Partner Program will be able to offer customers the widest range of Finnair products and services.

Please contact us for more details of the program.

How to connect

With NDC travel agents can access Finnair content (flights and ancillaries) directly or via an aggregator. Building a direct connection with Finnair requires the agent to have dedicated IT resources for the integration project and is mainly recommended for larger agents. The second option is to connect via an aggregator, which could be a GDS or a dedicated NDC content aggregator. No specific technical development is required from an agency to access Finnair content via these aggregators.

NDC API Features

Finnair NDC API is a developing solution. Currently the API enables agents to:

  • Sell all published AY coded flights
  • Sell private fares (e.g. corporate fares)
  • Sell all ancillary services that do not require a separate confirmation from Finnair
  • Show an illustrative seat map with various price points
  • Show brand benefits to enhance informative decision-making process
  • Make changes to an existing booking
  • Add ancillaries to an existing booking (post-booking)
  • Create ancillary campaigns
  • Cancel and refund booking
  • Receive notifications when there are schedule changes

NDC also enables Finnair content to be sold by non-IATA agents (via an aggregator) as the ticketing is done by Finnair.


Current distribution model and how NDC fits in the ecosystem

Currently agents access airline content mainly via GDSs. Fares and schedules are matched with airline availability to create an offer in the GDS. With NDC, the offer is created by the airline connecting to the seller directly or via an aggregator. This enables the seller to provide their customers with a similar shopping experience that airlines are able to offer on their websites.


Benefits for travel agents

All airline content becomes available in a fast and efficient way:

  • Easy access to selling ancillaries or fare up-sell
  • Higher total revenue per customer – Higher earning for agent
  • Easy and transparent access to product information
  • Faster access to new products (e.g. ancillaries)
  • Rich content to enhance informative decision making
  • Increase customer satisfaction and retention

Developer.finnair.com - sandbox environment for building the innovation

Finnair NDC sandbox is a testing environment which enables the developers to run an NDC API on their local machine. The API allows testing basic NDC messages and it returns static data. It provides an overview of how the NDC API works and how the messages look like, so it’s a great way to familiarize with NDC standard messaging.


Contact us

For any NDC related questions please contact our NDC team at ndc@finnair.com.