"Just connect to the API" is the part everyone gets wrong. Here's what actually happens between signing with a supplier and going live.
It's not just "connect to the API"
Every flight API integration conversation starts the same way: someone says "we just need to connect to Amadeus" or "TBO already has an API, right?" as if the hard part is done once you have the credentials. The credentials are the easy part. The actual work is mapping their response format to your booking flow, handling the fifteen ways a search can come back empty, and figuring out what your system should do when the fare a customer clicked on five minutes ago has since changed. None of that shows up in the API documentation.
The GDS vs NDC question nobody explains well
If you're integrating flights, you'll run into GDS (Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport) and NDC (airline-direct) sources, often for the same routes. GDS is older, more standardised, and easier to build against. NDC gives you access to fares and ancillaries the GDS doesn't always show, but every airline's NDC implementation is a little different, so "we support NDC" can mean five different things depending on who's saying it. If someone tells you integrating NDC is a weekend job, ask them how many airlines they've actually shipped it for.
Where most timelines actually slip
It's rarely the search integration that delays a project. It's ticketing and post-booking changes — refunds, date changes, partial cancellations on multi-passenger bookings. These are the workflows suppliers document last and test least, and they're exactly the ones your support team will get angry calls about if they're wrong. We've learned to build and test these before touching the pretty search UI, not after.
What to ask a vendor before you sign
Ask for a sandbox environment you can actually book test PNRs in, not just a search demo. Ask what happens to your integration when the supplier pushes an API version update — do you get advance notice, or find out when something breaks. And ask for one real, working example of a schedule change or cancellation flowing through their webhook, because that's the part most sales calls skip over entirely.
