What Airline Retailing means
Traditional airline distribution separates the product into pieces. Fares are filed in advance with ATPCO, availability comes from inventory, the GDS assembles a price, and the sale is recorded as a PNR, an e-ticket and possibly several EMDs. That works for seats but makes it hard to sell, show and service anything more complex.
IATA's Modern Airline Retailing programme aims for 100% offers and orders. Its building blocks are NDC for offers, Dynamic Offers, which IATA describes as combining dynamic pricing, continuous pricing and dynamic bundling, ONE Order for fulfilment, interlining with offers and orders, and Settlement with Orders. The NDC resolution dates from October 2012, and an Airline Retailing Consortium of airlines was formed under IATA in August 2022.
For airlines the goal is to price and package like an online retailer: personalise offers, sell ancillaries and branded fares in every channel, and keep one record of what the customer bought. IATA notes that timelines vary by airline size, business model and region.
For travel agencies, retailing changes the tools. Content increasingly comes as airline offers through NDC and other APIs, and servicing moves from tickets towards orders.
How Airline Retailing works
In a retailing model the airline, not the intermediary, creates the price and the product for each request.
- Seller sends a requestAn agency, OTA or airline website sends a shopping request with route, dates, passengers and any known customer details.
- Airline builds offersThe airline's offer engine prices flights and extras in real time and returns one or more priced offers, often as bundles.
- Customer choosesThe seller displays the offers with their content, such as seat type, bags and flexibility, and the customer selects one.
- Order is createdThe accepted offer becomes an order in the airline's order management system, with payment recorded against it.
- Order is serviced and settledChanges, extras and refunds update the order, and delivered items feed accounting and settlement.
Airline Retailing in practice
Filed fare versus offer (illustrative): under the traditional model, every agent searching Doha to Paris on the same day sees the same filed fare for a given booking class. Under retailing, the airline may return a lighter offer without bags, a standard bundle and a flexible bundle, each priced at that moment for that request.
Order-based first: Finnair's first native order, created on 5 May 2025 on the Amadeus Nevio platform, is an example of the order half of retailing in live use.
Channel pricing: airline surcharges on traditional GDS bookings, such as Lufthansa Group's Distribution Cost Charge introduced in 2015, are part of the commercial push towards retailing channels such as NDC.
Who uses it
Advantages and limitations
Advantages
- Airlines can sell bundles, ancillaries and personalised prices in agency channels as well as on their websites.
- Agents and travellers see clearer product details, such as what each fare includes.
- A single order record simplifies changes and reduces reconciliation between documents.
Limitations
- Offers from different airlines are harder to compare side by side than standard filed fares.
- Agencies need new technology and servicing processes, often while still supporting traditional bookings.
- Personalised pricing raises questions about transparency for corporate buyers and travellers.
Frequently asked questions about Airline Retailing
What does 'offers and orders' mean in the airline industry?
It describes IATA's target model for airline sales. An offer is a priced product the airline builds in response to a request, which can include flights and extras. An order is the record created when the customer accepts and pays for that offer. Together they replace filed fares, PNRs and tickets.
What is IATA Modern Airline Retailing?
Modern Airline Retailing is IATA's programme for moving airline distribution to 100% offers and orders. It brings together NDC, Dynamic Offers, ONE Order, interlining with offers and orders, and Settlement with Orders, and it is supported by an Airline Retailing Consortium of airlines formed under IATA in August 2022.
How is airline retailing different from merchandising?
Merchandising usually refers to selling extras, such as seats or bags, on top of a fare. Retailing is broader: the airline builds the whole priced product for each request, may bundle extras into it and manages the sale as an order. Merchandising is one part of a retailing strategy.
Will airline retailing replace published fares?
Not immediately. Many airlines still file fares with ATPCO and sell through GDSs, and IATA notes that transition timelines vary by airline size, business model and region. Over time more airlines expect to price dynamically through offers, so filed fares and offers will coexist for some years.
Get GDS, NDC and hotel content through one API
The TripGic Travel API aggregates flights, hotels and more behind a single REST/JSON integration.
Explore the Travel API