Sofia, Bulgaria - April 14, 2026
The Dreamix team was in Singapore last week for the second edition of the IATA World Data Symposium (WDS), held on April 8–9 at the Shangri-La Singapore. The event brought together over 700 data, technology, and cybersecurity professionals from across the aviation industry – and this year, Dreamix was there as an active contributor to two of IATA's Data and Technology Proof of Concepts (PoCs).
What We Worked On
As part of IATA's Strategic Partnerships Program, Dreamix participated in two PoC workstreams from Cycle 2 of the DaT PoC program, both presented at WDS:
Project Gaia — Global Data Bus. Gary Kenny, Head of Aviation Solutions at Dreamix, worked on Project Gaia together with Qatar Airways, Los Angeles World Airports, Globant, Confluent, Brightgrove and Merkle. Project Gaia, the Global Data Bus (GDB) Proof of Concept, established a secure, industry-wide event-streaming platform designed to replace fragmented legacy messaging with a modern, real-time data backbone. Built on Apache Kafka-compatible technology, the GDB utilizes a "Secure by Design" architecture featuring end-to-end encryption, a centralized Identity Registry for participant authentication and a content-blind transport layer to ensure data sovereignty and trust. The PoC successfully validated real-world operational exchanges, such as gate changes and baggage assignments, between Qatar Airways and Los Angeles World Airports across multi-cloud environments, demonstrating that a "connect once, reach many" model can significantly reduce integration complexity, lower operational costs and improve resilience for the global aviation ecosystem.
Digital Identity Verification in the Distribution Process. Dimitar Dimitrov and Georgi Minkov from the Dreamix engineering team tackled a problem that has cost the airline industry millions – when a booking request comes in, airlines often have no reliable way to verify who is actually making it. That gap enables fraud and grey-market reselling. The team built a booking system that integrated the NDC platforms of Air Canada, Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways, and IAG, and connected it with digital identity tools from Neoke and Hopae.
As a result, airlines can now verify the identity of the agent behind every request before granting access to their content — without guessing or blind trust.
The technical details of the PoC architecture are available on page 34 of the IATA Cycle 2 DaT PoC position paper.
What Our Engineers Learned at the WDS
Going into the project, the Dreamix team expected the main challenge to be technical — working with verifiable credentials, decentralised identifiers, and building a secure handshake between systems. The reality turned out differently.
"We weren't solving a tech problem but a complex business one," said Dimitar Dimitrov, who served as a lead engineer on the Digital Identity PoC.
"The technology is ready. But aligning the industry's commercial interests with a new security standard is the real hurdle. Every airline wants to maximise distribution, every OTA wants to sell as much as possible. When the drive to expand distribution opens the door to unauthorised agents and fraud, airlines face a trade-off. Verifiable credentials remove that trade-off — they allow the industry to scale without compromising on trust."
Integrating with four different airlines exposed just how diverse the technical landscape remains. Even within a small group, the team encountered a mix of NDC versions, varying communication protocols, and entirely different authorisation workflows. There is no one-size-fits-all yet — and the only reason the team hit aggressive deadlines was deep expertise combined with committed support from stakeholders at each airline.
Georgi Minkov, who presented the PoC results on stage at WDS, reflected on the experience: "We proved that a secure, trusted aviation ecosystem is no longer just a theory. Across airlines, partners, and tech providers, there's real momentum — and a genuine readiness to use technology in ways that make the ecosystem safer, smarter, and more efficient."
Key Themes at WDS 2026
The symposium was organised around three themes — data-driven operational efficiency, cybersecurity resilience, and AI-powered transformation.
On the data side, sessions explored how airlines and airports can use data as a strategic asset to drive stronger operational decisions — a thread that ran through both the keynotes and the PoC presentations, including Dreamix's own work on Project Gaia.
Cybersecurity panels tackled how to communicate risk to non-technical boards. IATA published PoC results proving that contactless, biometric-enabled international travel already works across multiple airlines and airports, with Director General Willie Walsh calling on governments to accelerate Digital Travel Credential issuance.
AI sessions covered agentic AI in airline operations, LLMs in cargo compliance, and digital twins for airport infrastructure monitoring. Speakers represented Singapore Airlines, Airbus, AWS, Boeing, Changi Airport, IBM, OpenAI, SITA, Globant, and many others.
Why This Matters — and What Comes Next
Dreamix joined IATA's Strategic Partnerships Program in September 2024 and has since moved from observer to active contributor. The DaT PoC programme is one of the few spaces in aviation where what you bring matters more than how big you are — and working alongside Qatar Airways, Japan Airlines, Google, SITA, and IATA itself is how real standards get built.
The Cycle 2 results are now published and available via IATA. Cycle 3 is already underway, with results expected at WDS 2027. Dreamix will continue building on the work done in Singapore.
About Dreamix
Dreamix (a Synechron company) is a custom software development company headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria. With nearly 300 engineers and 19 years of experience, Dreamix serves enterprise clients across aviation, healthcare, fintech, and transportation. As a strategic partner of IATA, Dreamix contributes to industry-wide innovation programmes while delivering custom aviation solutions to leading airlines worldwide.
