Why Architecture Determines the Retailing Prize
The industry has quantified what modularity is worth – and what monolithic architecture costs.
The numbers:
$7/pax – Full modern retailing value achievable with modular architecture (Source: McKinsey & Company / International Air Transport Association (IATA), 2019), of which:
- $4.5/pax– Value achievable with any architecture, including monolithic systems
- $2.5/pax at risk – What airlines with monolithic retailing leave on the table (Source: Threedot Modular Architecture Unlocks the Value of Airline Retailing, 2026)
Why the gap exists: Monolithic architectures create hidden constraints – the inability to distribute through new types of sellers, connect external pricing engines, serve third-party ancillaries, integrate non-air marketplaces, or partner with innovative service providers. Each constraint is a piece of the $7/pax prize that goes unrealized.
The Road From A to B: OOSD Transformation for Airlines
On-Demand Interview with Alyssa Dalsky , Director of Product, Airline, TPConnects
What’s Covered:
- Industry State in 2026 – Where OOSD adoption stands and why the first-mover window is still open
- PSS Renewal as the Trigger – Why contract renewal is the moment to evaluate Offer and Order
- Transition Without Big Bang – Progressive rollout beats full cutover every time
- When Value Shows Up– Why benefits appear at every stage, not just at the end
“Value doesn’t wait until the end of the transition. Airlines see operational and revenue gains at every stage – the question is how you sequence the rollout to capture them early.”
– Alyssa Dalsky, Director of Product – Airline, TPConnects
Modularity in Action: Three New Best-of-Breed Partnerships
No single vendor builds every piece of modern retailing well. Astra Nova’s modular architecture means airlines don’t have to wait for one company to catch up – they connect the right specialist for each function into a single orchestrated architecture. Three new Astra Nova partnerships show what that looks like in practice.
🔸M2P Consulting – Disruption Management
When a flight is disrupted, the challenge isn’t finding another seat – it’s finding the right replacement Offer for that passenger. M2P’s Orbit solution assesses passenger and product impact beyond seat availability; Astra Nova connects that decision directly to Order management in real time.
🔸 FlyNava Technologies – Dynamic Pricing
Static fares don’t respond to shifting demand. FlyNava’s Jupiter platform reads real-time market signals and prices each route dynamically; Astra Nova builds the full offer around that price instantly.
🔸 Ancileo – Insurance & Ancillary Revenue
Embedded insurance is one of the ancillary products monolithic systems struggle to sell natively. Our new partnership with Ancileo plugs travel insurance directly into the Astra Nova offer construction flow.
“Modularity means airlines don’t have to wait for one vendor to build everything. They connect the best solution for each function and let Astra Nova orchestrate the offer.”
– Praveen Kumar, Co-founder & CTO, TPConnects
AI Just Became the #1 Airline Tech Priority
AI is no longer a future consideration – it’s the top investment priority for airline leadership.
From Deloitte‘s CEO Compass 2026:
AI & machine learning jumped to #1 among airline CEO tech priorities for 2026 – up sharply from 2025, now cited by nearly 65%of respondents as a Top 3 investment.
What this means: Airlines aren’t asking whetherto invest in AI, they’re asking how to make their existing NDC and retailing infrastructure AI-queryable. That’s precisely the gap MCP is designed to close.
MCP and the Future of Airline Distribution: On-Demand Interview
Airlines have spent a decade building NDC capability. What’s changing now is the layer above it – how AI agents query it, and how airlines control what gets surfaced.
What’s Covered:
- The NDC Version Problem – Schema fragmentation from NDC 15.2 to 25.2 as the hidden tax on airline IT
- MCP Above NDC – A standardized server that eliminates integration complexity without deprecating existing infrastructure
- End Vendor Lock-In– Switching vendors means changing an endpoint, not rebuilding
Upcoming Events
- WAF – World Aviation Festival
13-15 October, 2026 | Lisbon, Portugal | Connect with us - International Air Transport Association (IATA) WPS Macao – World Passenger Symposium
28-29 October, 2026 | Macao, China | Meet us at WPS
The Infrastructure Moment for Travel Sellers
Accenture‘s June 2026 research found that only 30% of travel companies say they are fully ready to orchestrate end-to-end journeys across partners and ecosystems. Nearly two in three travelers use 4 or more platforms to book a single trip, and 94%describe the process as moderately or very complex.
The sellers pulling ahead are solving this with unified access: one screen for GDS, NDC, and LCC, normalized content, and fast onboarding for new airlines and markets.
Customers Winning with Iris
Cumbaya: Agentic AI Meets Modern Air Content
In July, Cumbaya– an agentic AI platform helping travel agencies and TMCs build hyper-personalized, multi-destination itineraries in minutes rather than hours – selected Iris as its air content engine. Agentic AI doesn’t just need content; it needs normalized, machine-readable data delivered fast enough for real-time decisions across routing, pricing, and policy constraints simultaneously.
“TPConnects Iris provides a modern API with global coverage that supports AI decision-making at speed.”
– Sven Hermans, Co-founder & CTO, Cumbaya
High Class Travel: 20% Revenue Growth in 12 Months
A North American TMC came to Iris with a single-GDS constraint and left with a platform advantage. Twelve months after implementing Iris in Q2 2025:
📈 20% revenue growth | 📊 Bookings tripled | ✈️ NDC share: 0% → 24%
“We went from being limited by a single GDS to having access to everything – GDS, NDC, and LCC – all in one screen. Our agents are faster, our customers are happier.”
– Joseph Singer, CEO & Founder, High Class Travel
The AI Layer Is Already Here
Accenture’s research also found that 87% of consumers are already open to booking via an AI agent.But AI agents can’t act on content they can’t read. Fragmented schemas and inconsistent formats across NDC, LCC, and GDS sources are invisible to a human agent working around them – they’re a hard stop for an AI one.
That’s the gap MCP closes: a unified server that makes Iris content machine-readable and queryable, so AI agents can search, compare, and book without a human translating the data first.
MCP and the Future of Travel Distribution
On-Demand Interview with Praveen Kumar, CTO & Co-Founder, TPConnects
What’s Covered:
- Unified MCP Server– NDC, LCC, and GDS through a single endpoint
- Zero-Code Integration– New airlines live in one week vs. three months
- Search Data as an Asset– Anonymous searches become commercial intelligence
Real Results: Iris has added over ten airlines in a few months using the MCP approach.
Lufthansa Group: A Decade of Partnership, Now Deeper
TPConnects and Lufthansa Group announced a significant expansion of their strategic partnership, building on collaboration since 2016 – centered on NDC 24.1 Hybrid Certification, giving Iris sellers access to the latest retailing and servicing workflows across Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways, Eurowings, and Discover Airlines.
“Our partnership with TPConnects has been instrumental in our NDC journey since 2016.”
– Heinrich Lange , VP Digital Retailing & Order Management, Lufthansa Group
New GSA Appointments: Sri Lanka and Bahrain
The reach of that content keeps expanding, with two new GSAs bringing Iris to travel sellers across the MENASA region:
- 🇱🇰 Acorn Group :Now GSA for Iris in Sri Lanka, leveraging its established distribution network to get agencies live in days.
- 🇧🇭 Global Travel & Tours W.L.L :Now GSA for Iris in Bahrain, giving agencies access to 65+ NDC/LCC airlines plus all four major GDS providers.
Upcoming Iris Events
- TIS – Tourism Innovation Summit
6–8 October 2026 | Seville, Spain | Book a Meeting - Uzakrota Baku
7 October 2026 | Baku, Azerbaijan | Meet Us - ITB Asia
21–23 October 2026 | Singapore – Stand B28 | Visit Us - Uzakrota Istanbul
27 November 2026 | Istanbul, Turkey | Schedule a Meeting
