Hawaiian Airlines on April 1 plans to begin levying a surcharge on U.S. bookings made via legacy GDS technology, a move that will make it the first U.S. carrier to impose a GDS surcharge.
The carrier also said it will remove all intra-Hawaii flight from the GDSs on April 1 for U.S. points of sale.
To avoid the surcharge or to book intra-Hawaii flights, U.S. travel advisors will have to book on the carrier's approved NDC-enabled channels.
"As a destination airline focused on leisure travel to, from and within Hawaii, it is essential that we continue to invest in more modern and efficient technologies to better tailor our products and services to the Hawaii traveler," Theo Panagioutoulias, Hawaiian's senior vice president of global sales and alliances, wrote in a letter to travel agencies. "As we move forward together, Hawaiian will be encouraging the use of modern distribution technologies that allows us to provide greater choice and value to our guests."
Hawaiian Airlines did not reveal the surcharge amount.
Hawaiian said travel agencies will have three options for avoiding the surcharge. They can use HA Connect, which is the carrier's NDC-enabled direct-connect solution.
Option two will be to book via the Hawaiian Airlines Partner Portal, which will be a new website for travel advisors that includes the airlines NDC-enabled offers.
Finally, travel agencies will be able to book tickets and ancillary products via approved NDC-enabled direct-connect aggregators, including ATPCO, Travelfusion, TravelNDC, ClarityTTS, NuFlights, Thomalex, Tidesquare and Verteil Technologies.
The carrier said that it hopes to add NDC-enabled GDS content to its HA Connect Approved Partners program over time.
The three primary GDSs for the U.S. market -- Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport -- have each developed capabilities to sell NDC-enabled content, with rollouts in the early stages.