Finnair and Amadeus join IATA NDC Hackathon in Silicon Valley

“Taking airline retailing to the next level” – was the theme of the

in Silicon Valley. It was an ideal location for the hackathon as the home to many of the biggest IT corporations in the world and an incubator for thousands of startups.

Held at the headquarters of LinkedIn, participants got to immerse in a 28-hour coding experience using an NDC API provided by the 12 companies participating. 79 developers comprising 21 teams participated in the NDC Hackathon, which featured marketers, designers, and industry innovators. IATA has recognised that developers are key in pushing NDC to transform airline travel and retailing.

Amadeus and Finnair joined forces to support the hackathon. Both companies provided an NDC API platform to developers using a Sandbox that helped them design and deploy travel applications. The Sandbox included NDC messages that enabled the developers to generate an end-to-end booking flow using the API.

Winning team of the ONE order category

Developers were asked to address at least one of the challenges around leisure travel, business travel, or ONE Order, with the help of mentors that guided them throughout the hackathon.

One of the teams using the Amadeus-Finnair API won an award under the ONE order category. This was a solution for young travellers to create a multi-city itinerary, proposing the order in which the traveller should visit the cities to obtain the best deal. Secondly, it would also optimise the traveller’s time by avoiding flights in the middle of the afternoon for instance.

A second team using the Amadeus-Finnair API was selected for the incubation phase in Geneva and featured a personalised flight experience by enabling the traveller to select from a seat map the quiet zone for sleeping, or a kid zone for those travelling with children. In the case of a group of people travelling together for a wedding or event, they would also be able to select their seats together from a seat map displaying that group area.

The Finnair-Amadeus NDC API received positive feedback from the winning teams for its excellent response times, ease of use, and good material supports.

To all the NDC Hackathon winners and participants – congratulations and we look forward to collaborating with you again!