Initiate the NDC onboarding process with the target airline by registering as an NDC aggregator or direct connect through their commercial or tech partnerships team; obtain sandbox credentials and the endpoint URL.
Review the airline's NDC implementation profile document which specifies which NDC capabilities (AirShopping, OfferPrice, OrderCreate, OrderRetrieve, OrderChange, OrderCancel) are supported and any deviations from the IATA NDC schema.
Implement the OAuth 2.0 or API-key authentication flow specified by the airline; store tokens securely with expiry tracking and implement silent token refresh to avoid mid-session auth failures.
Send a test AirShopping request in the airline's sandbox environment and validate the response schema against their NDC profile; pay attention to any airline-specific extensions in the custom namespace.
Implement each supported transaction type (search, price, book, retrieve, change, cancel) with full error code mapping from the airline's error catalog to user-friendly messages.
Before going live, obtain the airline's approval for production access; many airlines require functional and performance certification tests to be passed before issuing production credentials.
Known gotchas
Each airline's NDC implementation is different despite the common schema — assume nothing is standard and test every transaction type against the specific airline's sandbox.
NDC connections are bilateral commercial agreements; the airline can impose volume minimums, API change notices, and certification renewals — factor this into your maintenance budget.
Some airlines block or limit NDC access from certain markets or agent types; verify your commercial eligibility for NDC content from each carrier before building the integration.
Give your agent this knowledge — and 200+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp