Well, just to discuss a separate point for a moment: Although the story describes in a technical way that the EDIFACT, XML, etc standards are cumbersome, inert

Well, just to discuss a separate point for a moment: Although the story describes in a technical way that the EDIFACT, XML, etc standards are cumbersome, inert, and resistant to change, I think the real story is somewhat external to the "code" level reasons. And it will also be a lesson (for the proponents of some change to any kind of standard) about why just a technically better solution doesn't always win. Because, if you look at almost any standard, there's generally nothing stopping someone from proposing an alternative or better version. It's the adoption that's the tough part. The more fundamental root cause of why this particular "bad" or outdated standard persists so long is that airlines are a very risk averse and capital intensive business. Any change -- especially one so fundamental as could interfere with their minute-by-minute booking engine (companies can lose billions if that system goes down) -- is highly risky. And it wasn't really built with incremental changeability or "hot swappability" in mind. Changing it involves retraining thousands of people, changing computer terminals, keyboards (with special character keys coded in plastic), practices, interfaces to yet other vendors. And when your company is burning dozens of millions of $ per day, that's something that you don't risk unless it's a strategic decision. So that dynamic flows down into what your software vendors are incentivized (or become attuned) to produce or charge you for. Until there's some ground-level shift -- for example suddenly everyone needs to charge baggage fees -- no airline was actively asking for that capability to add on ancillary fees. And no GDS provider was seeking to innovate on it. Airlines simply wouldn't pay the extra for that unnecessary functionality... until they did. Old, expensive, risky industry -- and that's why sometimes the change has to come from new entrants who aren't tied to these legacy systems. Although, and this is an even more involved topic, sometimes those new entrants find they have to tie into the legacy system to survive and get customers.