Air India - Manager - Distribution - IIM/ISB/FMS/MDI

Job Title: Manager - Distribution

Role Summary:

- The Manager - Distribution is accountable for designing, optimizing, and governing the airline's global
distribution strategy across direct and indirect channels.

- The role drives adoption of NDC, ensures high- quality and accurate content across all channels (direct, OTA, Metasearch, TMCs, GDS), manages distribution cost and performance, and safeguards against fraud and GDS misuse/abuse.

- You will partner cross- functionally (Revenue Management, Digital, Sales, Loyalty, Finance, Legal, IT) and with external partners (GDSs, aggregators, ATPCO, IATA, PSPs, acquirers) to deliver differentiated, efficient, and secure distribution outcomes.

Key Responsibilities:

Channel Strategy & Development:

- Develop and execute the global distribution strategy across direct, NDC, GDS, OTA, metasearch,
corporate/TMC, and agency channels.

- Identify, onboard, and scale priority partners (aggregators, resellers, tech providers) to expand reach and optimize channel mix.

- Enhance the efficacy of the existing channels so that the utilization of these channels is at par with the best in the industry

- Create new distribution channels and devise strategies for adaption

Global Content Distribution & Quality:

- Own end- to- end content governance: fare filing, ancillaries, branded fares, bundles, rich content (images, attributes), and offer/ordering accuracy across channels.

- Establish robust monitoring of content accuracy, timeliness, and completeness, with automated QA/ and exception handling.

NDC Adoption & API- Based Distribution:

- Lead NDC roadmap, versioning, and partner migration; champion offer/Order API capabilities (shopping, pricing, servicing).

- Manage technical and operational integration with aggregators, resellers, and corporate platforms; oversee certification and conformance.

- Drive continuous improvement in NDC features (ancillaries, bundles, servicing, disruption handling, settlement) and developer experience.

Distribution Cost & Performance Management:

- Model and manage distribution cost (GDS fees, third- party/aggregator costs, payment fees, chargebacks, fraud), optimizing channel profitability.

- Define KPIs and dashboards for conversion, yield, attach rates, servicing costs, error rates, latency, and partner performance.

Risk, Fraud & GDS Abuse Control:

- Implement controls and monitoring for fraud (card testing, account takeover, synthetic identities, friendly fraud) across channels.

- Monitor and mitigate GDS misuse/abuse (speculative/ghost bookings, churn, passive segments, ADM- driven behaviors).

Standards, Compliance & Partner Governance:

- Ensure compliance with global distribution standards (IATA NDC/ONE Order, Edifact phasing, ATPCO schemas, BSP/ARC rules).

- Govern partner SLAs (availability, accuracy, servicing) and technical reliability (latency, uptime, error budgets).

- Maintain up- to- date documentation, playbooks, and change- management processes for releases and schema changes.

Analytics, Insights & Reporting:

- Build actionable insights from distribution data: demand signals, channel mix, leakage, fare integrity, attach rates, fraud patterns.

- Provide regular performance reviews and recommendations to executive stakeholders; translate analytics into commercial actions.

- Champion data quality and lineage; ensure BI accuracy and trusted metrics across teams.

Required Qualifications:

-10 plus years in airline/GDS/aggregator/OTA/TMC distribution, with progressively responsible roles.

- Strong expertise in API- based distribution and IATA NDC (offer/Order APIs, schemas, conformance,
servicing workflows).

- Hands- on experience with GDS (Edifact, ticketing/servicing flows, ADM/ACM mechanisms) and GDS
commercial constructs.

- Knowledge of ATPCO fare filing, branded fares/ancillaries, and rich content distribution.

- Solid understanding of payments (PSPs, tokenization, 3DS, fraud tooling, risk scoring, chargeback
management).

- Proficiency in data analytics (SQL/BI tools), building dashboards, and interpreting KPIs for decision- making.

- Experience managing distribution cost, partner SLAs, and commercial agreements.

- Strong stakeholder management, vendor governance, and cross- functional leadership.