At the Business Travel Show America on October 17, 2025, Delta Air Lines' Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Distribution, Steve Sear, detailed the company's deliberate and measured strategy for adopting artificial intelligence (AI) and the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) New Distribution Capability (NDC) standards. Sear emphasized a collaborative approach, stating that Delta wants its partners and customers to "pull" for the new capabilities rather than the airline pushing them out, ensuring the integration process is valuable and provides a consistent customer experience. This cautious journey, particularly with NDC, contrasts with more aggressive rollouts by other major U.S. airlines and focuses on maintaining parity across global distribution systems (GDS), which are crucial for the corporate travel sector that Sear described as Delta's "bread and butter." The airline expects a multiyear iterative process to refine the program.