Jul 22, 2025 / By Vanessa Horwell
5 min read
Our new interview series examines the structural challenges facing aviation and the companies and individuals working to address them. From distribution deadlocks and budget overruns, to stalled innovation, hear stories of those on the “front line,” confronting legacy systems, commercial inertia, and the industry’s chronic reluctance to change.
Meet Ann Cederhall
In the airline industry, innovation is notoriously slow, especially in areas like distribution, payments and order management. Despite years of talk around IATA’s new distribution capability (NDC) and One Order standards, most carriers remain tied to legacy infrastructure and dependent on passenger service systems (PSS) that were never designed for modern retailing.
Few people understand the limits of this environment better than Ann Cederhall. With decades of experience in travel with companies like Amadeus, ATPCO and Pros and airlines such as SAS, Lufthansa and Norwegian she now works as an independent consultant, helping aviation players rethink how they sell, connect and innovate.
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
DECADES OLD DRAG
You’ve worked on all sides of airline distribution and retail, from TMCs to GDSs to the airlines themselves. What’s the biggest thing holding the industry back from modernizing?
There are so many areas that need modernizing. But the biggest issue, especially in distribution, is that the industry is still running on processes and systems from the 1960s. When you consider that distribution can be the third or fourth largest cost for an airline, it boggles the mind that updating the underlying infrastructure isn’t a bigger priority.
THE NDC ILLUSION
NDC was meant to fix that by streamlining how airlines and websites share information, allowing for more personalized offers and better ancillary services. But more than a decade after it was introduced, adoption remains slow. Why?
The idea for NDC was triggered by low-cost carriers, many of whom bypassed GDS fees by investing in direct distribution and unbundling their products, appealing to a new kind of traveler who wanted to pay only for what they used. Legacy airlines turned to IATA to create a new standard, hoping it would magically fix distribution. That was the first mistake.
I’ve been very vocal in my criticism of NDC because it’s not open source. Instead of inviting outside perspectives or learning from other industries, we looked inward. The result? IATA working groups producing multiple versions of the standard that don’t align. And because upgrading is time-consuming and expensive, distribution today is more fragmented than ever.
I wish we’d spent that time and money solving for what travelers actually want, such as being able to buy ancillaries across partner airlines. To me, distribution must become API-first.
ONE ORDER, MANY PROBLEMS
What strikes me is that if you have a problem created by your own providers and your own industry, surely you would look for best practices and external ideas to solve that. It sounds like that didn’t happen. In other areas—like IATA’s One Order, which aims to streamline booking, ticketing and servicing—has the industry learned its lesson?
Unfortunately, no. I have strong views on One Order, which aims to unify the passenger name record, ticket and electronic miscellaneous document (EMD) into a single record. The idea is fine in theory, but if the goal is to remove tickets and EMDs and overhaul core PSS functions, then we’re looking at something much bigger than the industry is ready for.
Everything from shopping systems to revenue accounting and payments relies on those legacy components. If you remove one piece, you have to modernize all the systems tied to it, many of which haven’t been touched in decades. We talk about One Order being in place for 2030. Given the level of transformation required, I find that to be unrealistic.
What we need instead is order orchestration: adding an order management system on top of the PSS. It’s the same idea that powers Walmart or Tesco. You manage offers, bundles, personalization and customer data in a centralized way—with business logic, a CRM and the ability to act on real-time information. That’s very different from the One Order vision, which has become synonymous with transforming the entire PSS, and that’s going to be a massive, expensive change.
THE COST OF INERTIA
What does it mean when airlines choose not to act or invest in modernization?
It becomes very difficult to move quickly or make the changes you want. Airlines get locked into outdated systems and commercial models that haven’t evolved in decades. Many have outsourced so much of their technical knowledge to PSS vendors that they no longer know what’s possible internally.
DOERS VS. DELAYERS
Can airlines really adopt a modern, retail-like mindset?
Some already have. United, Delta, Ryanair, AirAsia—these are the big doers. They invest. They build. They don’t wait for perfect standards to be handed to them. There are also smaller doers—airlines forging ahead on their own terms. LATAM, for example, has been working on order management for five years.
Then there are the followers. They wait for their PSS provider to make a move. And finally, there’s a large group of airlines that just don’t care. In essence, we’re going to see some airlines that push forward and try to work around the roadblocks.
DISCONNECTED JOURNEYS
How are passengers experiencing the current ecosystem?
The ideal is a connected journey, where a traveler’s data, preferences, disruptions and ancillaries all flow through a single order and are communicated across the experience. We’re not there. Customers are frustrated by that gap, especially when other sectors have figured this out.
I’m optimistic that the doers will get there. Hopefully, others will follow. The key is to stop aiming for Big Bang transformation. That made sense 60 years ago when tech was expensive and everyone had to move in sync. But today, incremental change is possible. If banks can do it, why can’t airlines?
NO MORE BIG BANGS
There’s a lot of geopolitical uncertainty right now, particularly tied to the current U.S. administration. That’s already impacted the travel landscape. How do you think the industry will respond?
There have been many crises before. I’m sure we’ll muddle through this one, too. My hope is that it forces airlines to focus more seriously on cost reduction and modernization; not just because they should, but because they have to.
That said, I thought COVID would trigger a major change in distribution—and it didn’t. There are major airlines working with large consulting firms on projects producing very few results. It’s as though fear of failure is embedded in the industry’s DNA. But failure is essential to progress.
LEADERSHIP
Let’s talk leadership. What’s missing from airline leaders today?
Commercial awareness and the willingness to question the status quo. I negotiated a commercial model last year that resembled the one from 20 years ago.
There’s also a massive experience gap. A lot of deep airline knowledge disappeared during the pandemic. Younger staff may be tech-savvy, but don’t understand the legacy systems. Older staff have the knowledge but are nearing retirement. That transfer isn’t happening.
NO RUNWAY
You’ve often touched on the role of startups in airline innovation. What’s standing in their way?
It’s incredibly hard for startups to get traction. At the same time, the most profitable companies in this space are often intermediaries, not the airlines. That imbalance is a problem. If we want innovation, we have to support it. Give startups a platform. Reduce barriers to entry. Stop treating new ideas as threats. Right now, it’s just too hard.
FINAL THOUGHTS
As Ann points out, the airline industry’s inertia is not a function of technical constraint but of deeply ingrained institutional caution. Decision-makers need to stop waiting for consensus and start acting with intent. Progress won’t come from adding new acronyms to the already exhaustive list or more committee-led frameworks. It will come from those willing to adopt a more pragmatic, commercially minded approach to modernization—and willing to question, experiment and rebuild.
To talk with Ann Cederhall or learn more about her work, follow her on LinkedIn or contact her directly at ann@leapshift.com.
