NDC was the bridge, not the destination
If you have ever sat in an NDC steering group, you will know the feeling.
A lot of progress.
A lot of complexity.
A lot of “yes, but”.
Veronica Hull called it out neatly in our episode of Pod Leaders – “Flight Path to the Future: Innovation and Change with Veronica Hull“.
She was in distribution during the early NDC wave (around 2011–2012), and her view is that the industry is still moving, but the bigger shift now is modern retailing and Offer and Order.
This is where airline leaders need to be honest with themselves.
You cannot bolt modern retailing onto a legacy operating model and expect it to behave like ecommerce.
And your customers will not grade you against other airlines. They will grade you against everything else in their life.
Netflix-level personalisation.
Banking-app-level self-service.
Ecommerce-level convenience.
That expectation is only increasing as airports and regulators lean further into digital identity and automation. TSA’s own Touchless ID programme is a pretty clear signal that friction is being squeezed out of the journey, and that “show your documents and queue patiently” is not the direction of travel.
So “revolution, not iteration” is not a slogan. It is a competitive requirement.
Veronica Hull
Modern retailing only works when the organisation changes with it. That is why representation and inclusion matters more than ever. The next generation of airline leaders will be asked to modernise selling, servicing and disruption recovery all at once. If the room making those decisions does not reflect the customers and colleagues we serve, we will miss what matters on the ground. My focus is helping airlines widen the leadership pipeline, build confidence through mentorship, and create environments where diverse talent can progress faster than the “slow and steady” pace our industry is used to. Change needs capability, and capability needs people.
The uncomfortable truth about modern retailing programmes
Most modern retailing programmes struggle for one of three reasons.
-They start in tech, not in behaviour
You can build Offer and Order components and still run the airline like a PNR-and-ticket factory.
-They forget servicing and disruption
Selling is easy compared to servicing when things go wrong. Customers now expect proactive service recovery, not queues and paper vouchers.
-They underestimate legacy risk
A Reuters report into the January 4, 2026 Greek airport radio blackout points to obsolete comms infrastructure as the core issue, not a cyberattack. That is what legacy risk looks like when it becomes operational.
Modern retailing does not remove that risk. It increases the need to manage it, because you are building new dependencies on top of the old world.
What should change in the operating model
This is the bit Veronica kept circling back to: change sticks when the people are involved.
Airlines often put frontline teams furthest from decision-making, even though they understand the real world best.
Her “Make it better” programme at Wizz Air is a great counterexample: give the airline a voice, close the loop, and build continuous improvement as a habit.
In practical terms, that means:
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designing Offer and Order workflows with airport, cabin, and contact centre input from day one
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measuring success on servicing outcomes, not just conversion
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building feedback mechanisms that are visible, fast, and trusted
Because your future retailing platform is only as good as the behaviour it enables across the operation.
The “AI-native” ambition is raising the bar
IBM and Riyadh Air’s announcement is fascinating because it is effectively saying: we are starting without the legacy patchwork, and we will run as an AI-native enterprise from day one.
Most airlines do not have that luxury.
But you can still learn from the intent:
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reduce friction in decision-making
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standardise and simplify data flows
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automate repeatable work so humans focus on judgement calls
And crucially, you need leaders who have done this outside aviation too. Veronica said it directly in the podcast: bringing in retail background leadership can help align targets and shift mindsets.
What this means for hiring in airline tech
This is where I will be blunt, because it is what we see in the market.
Modern retailing programmes do not get blocked by a lack of vendor options.
They get blocked by a lack of people who can bridge worlds:
Offer and Order concepts + airline servicing reality
Product thinking + operational constraints
Commercial outcomes + system behaviour
Thornton Gregory is built for exactly that gap in airline tech recruitment. When you are hiring for modern retailing, you are not just hiring for “skills”. You are hiring for judgement and translation.
The roles that tend to become bottlenecks:
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product leaders who can own end-to-end retailing outcomes
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programme and transformation leaders who can make change land across ops and commercial
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BAs and architects who understand both legacy constraints and future state language
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leaders who can bring external retail patterns into airline reality without breaking safety and resilience
Three questions to take into your next steering group
If you are leading modern retailing, ask this:
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Are we designing for disruption and servicing, or just selling?
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Have we built a real feedback loop from frontline teams into change decisions?
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Do we have the right people who can translate across legacy and future state, or are we hoping the vendor will do it for us?
That last one is where recruitment becomes strategy, not admin.
