IATA Open API – A Community at the Heart of Your Digital Transformation

Why the Industry Needs an Open Data Ecosystem

In 2021, the Digital Transformation Advisory Council (DTAC), one of the Advisory Councils advising the IATA Board of Governors, set a strategy to achieve an airline industry Open Data Ecosystem through the adoption of Open API, Open standards, and Open Architecture.

The aim of implementing this ecosystem is to accelerate the industry transition away from costly legacy systems and embrace a modern technology environment where any party — such as customers, sellers, airports, and airlines — can connect seamlessly to any other party in an open, secure, and trusted manner.

Ultimately, it will allow airlines to fully control their data and run their businesses as they see fit.

How IATA Open API helps

The IATA Open API program serves as an enabler for achieving the Open Data Ecosystem. The program focuses on the following key objectives:

• Promote discoverability and bring traffic to APIs provided by trusted industry parties.
• Build new partnerships through APIs without compromising the control of data.
• Develop and promote the adoption of industry API standards and best practices. 

There are three pillars under the IATA Open API program.

1. Open API Hub

The Open API Hub is the airline industry’s one-stop API portal to promote industry API discoverability, facilitate API onboarding, and enable innovation, as part of the IATA developer portal.

The Hub:

• is available to all industry parties to list APIs, interact with the API community, and build partnerships.
• supports APIs from all business domains, using any modern technology.
• supports provider-controlled API visibility, such as public, partner, and private APIs, and who can access it.
• promotes adoption of the industry API standards and programs.

Industry adoption status (by Oct 2023):

• 3200+ organizations onboard
• 87 APIs listed including 46 Open APIs (what is Open API)
• 27 Airline APIs, 10 Airline Supplier APIs, and 25 IATA APIs are listed

2. API Standards

Focusing on the consistency and interoperability in the data exchange standards, the IATA Open API Working Group developed the REST API standards (Representational State Transfer), as well as the supporting tools for adoption, such as the JSON schema library sourced from the standard data model (including developer guide), and API linter rules.

3. API Certification

IATA runs the Open Air certification to recognize the providers who follow industry REST API standards in implementation and promote the compliant APIs on the IATA Open API Hub.

How to join

If you are interested in being part of the airline industry Open API community and promoting your APIs, please follow the below procedure:

Join the Open API Hub (user manual)

• Discover and connect to APIs as a consumer
• Publish APIs of your organization

Follow REST API standards (Representational State Transfer) in your API implementation and apply for Open Air certification

• Fill in the application form and submit it to openair@iata.org

Join the Open API working group to contribute to industry standard-setting activities

• Contact openapi@iata.org