Case Study: International Air Transport Association (IATA) achieves API standardization and industry-wide interoperability with SmartBear's SwaggerHub

API Standards To Enable Aviation Innovation

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is the trade body for the world’s airlines, representing carriers that handle over 82% of global traffic. As airlines adopt more application programming interfaces (APIs) to power bookings, tracking, payments and baggage, inconsistent API design across carriers created interoperability problems, developer friction and passenger-facing errors—so IATA needed a way to enforce common API standards and simplify integration.

IATA created the Open Air program, standardized on the OpenAPI specification and adopted SmartBear’s SwaggerHub as a collaborative hub for API design and governance. SwaggerHub provided a single source of truth where working groups could co-design, review and maintain specs, reducing rework, improving data exchange and accelerating the rollout of consistent, interoperable APIs across the industry.

International Air Transport Association (IATA)

Matt McKinley

Senior Manager in Technology Standards