In my discussions with customers and industry colleagues, I get many questions about our progress in enabling modern airline retailing. One area that draws a lot of attention is our POC for interlining with offers and orders. So, I'd like to share our vision for airline retailing, our progress with iRetail (our OOSD platform), and maybe even bust a few myths circulating the industry. 

Why is interlining with offers and orders so critical?

We believe that interlining with offers and orders is the unequivocal master case to demonstrate whether an OOSD works and is designed to do what it´s supposed to. We´ve all been in situations where traveling with two different airlines on the same ticket has resulted in an experience that´s anything but seamless. At its most basic level, not being able to check-in on airline B when the booking was performed through airline A. So booking and enjoying a consistent experience across partner airlines, including ancillary purchases, is crucial to modern airline retailing and improving the traveler experience. Putting interlining to the test demonstrates whether all systems are working correctly.

What's our progress with interlining with offers and orders?

Our POC for interlining with offers and orders demonstrated that IATA's vision works. We leveraged several components of our existing solutions to perform the POC, proving that iRetail simplifies interlining, from sales to delivery and reporting, in an OOSD world. We are currently working with two major alliance carriers on an in-production pilot that will go live in Q1 2025.

How will OOSD impact DCS processes for interlining?

Simplifying industry processes, facilitating partnerships, and upgrading core systems with modern connectivity will help us become more customer-centric, efficient, and cost-effective. For interlining, for example, shifting from the IATCI standard to IATA's ONE Order standard for delivery and check-in-related processes simplifies and accelerates passenger processing and authorization. We can foresee airline apps replacing physical check-in counters and processes entirely with automated background processing. In line with OOSD principles, the app must also allow on-the-spot ancillary purchases across airlines without sending travelers to separate ticket counters. Our solution already enables this.

What role will code sharing play in the future?

Technically, code sharing – and arguably interlining as we know it - will no longer be required in an OOSD world. However, it´s up to airlines to decide how to run their business and whether code sharing is still relevant for their branded products and commercial strategy. As the industry shifts towards greater customer-centricity, airlines must ensure brand consistency, smooth customer experiences, and coherent delivery and fulfillment across airline partners. As vendors, our job is to provide airlines with the tools they need to run their business how they want. Ultimately, it´s up to the airline to make the final call on whether they want to keep the codeshare principle alive.

How will modern retailing change the relationship between travelers and airlines?

Put differently – how much do airlines know about their customers today despite them sitting in their airplanes for X hours? The way incumbent systems are designed today, travelers are treated like passengers, not customers, with insights relying heavily on their membership in airline loyalty programs. In an OOSD end-state, airlines will know much more about their customers even if they´re not members of the loyalty program. We´ll be able to pull customer insights across touchpoints throughout the travel lifecycle and beyond. That doesn´t mean loyalty programs aren´t going to be relevant; they´ll still offer a deeper, richer layer of insights. Centralizing and facilitating access to this data opens new opportunities to engage with customers more meaningfully, not just when traveling.

What role will intermodal connectivity play?

Offering customers more choices, like high-speed train connectivity, is consistent with enabling more traveler-centric experiences. But that choice needs to be relevant and manageable. While encouraging other travel verticals, like train or bus companies, to adopt airline industry standards, such as NDC, is unlikely, there are other ways of integrating that content. It will require connecting to platforms that facilitate external content plugins through APIs. This is one of the key capabilities and founding principles of the OOSD landscape.

Where do we start on the journey to modern airline retailing?

Given the way incumbent systems and processes are set up across the industry, traditional, monolithic thinking would dictate starting with flights and seats specifically. While it´s undeniably critical to get airline core products right, the beauty of the modular approach modern retailing entails is that several work streams can work simultaneously on different areas. Modern, cloud-native architectures, in conjunction with agile methodologies, give airlines the freedom to quickly test, learn, and improve the areas most critical to their unique strategies, whether starting with seats, new pricing models, or order generation. Each airline must be true to its strategy and ensure systems interoperability where industry standards don´t exist to accelerate the industry´s modernization. A flexible retail platform with seamless integration capabilities will be critical to enable this.

So, should Offer or Order come first?

No matter how powerful the Offer engine is, you need a robust system to manage complex Orders. If airlines solely focus on Offer without working on Order in parallel, they´ll continue to rely heavily on their PSS. And that means they´ll have to find expensive workaround solutions, defeating the purpose of IATA´s programs for change. Airlines building out a catalog of air- and non-air products and services with dynamic rules and conditions, like pricing, in Offer require comprehensive definition capabilities in Order to generate, fulfill, and service purchases. iRetail allows precise and detailed meta descriptions of any air- or non-air product, enabling granular offer configuration. A highly flexible API library facilitates content integration with internal modules or external systems, ensuring fast, accurate, and coherent offer, order, and fulfillment processes. So, our view is that you either work on Offer and Order in parallel or start with Order to lay the foundations for those efficiency gains.

Final thoughts on "the business case"

While many boardroom discussions understandably revolve around "the business case for change," other industries are pressing ahead fast, and travelers now expect modern consumer experiences across all facets of their lives. The cat is out of the bag - while the current landscape was adequate for decades, there´s much to improve in travel to catch up to other industries. Each airline needs to forge its own path, but the longer the wait, the heavier the lifting will be down the line. Traveler expectations have evolved, and while business case discussions are logical, another question to address is: what´s the mid-term cost of dragging our feet? In our conversations with airlines, we find that the case for Offer, including metrics around revenue, is more mature than quantifying the cost savings and efficiency gains around Order. There´s a lot of paralysis by analysis. Together, Offer and Order will lead to greater industry profitability and more intangible benefits around the brand and the customer experience.

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