When a person books a flight, less than 15 minutes pass between their starting to fill in the search form and a ticket appearing in their mailbox. From the airline side, it involves many events and systems to issue a ticket and make sure that the right person will board the plane. In this article, we describe the flight booking pipeline and explain the main processes supporting it. flight booking management

Airline distribution: How does it work?

Let’s start at the very beginning. And in this case, it’s the way airlines distribute their tickets. This process is comprised of several systems, which we’ll detail in the sections below.

GDS

The first one is the Global Distribution System (GDS), a network system connected to numerous flight providers. GDS aggregates content of airline inventory, schedules, and fares. The system collects this data from the following sources:

• Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) for public and non-public fare collection and distribution, and fare-related content;
• airline Passenger Service System (PSS) for inventory and ancillary services.

PSS

Passenger Service System (PSS) is a software solution used by airlines that comprises a central reservation system (CRS), airline inventory system, and departure control system (DCS). The CRS is responsible for inventory management and ticketing, an airline inventory system defines a general number of available seats, and a DCS processes the check-in. Also, PSSs includes data storage and an Internet booking engine for direct booking processing, and a merchandising system for ancillary distribution. We’ll look at these systems closer later in the article. Some key players among PSSs are New Skies by Navitaire, Altea by Amadeus, and Avantik by Bravo Aero.

NDC

All the systems mentioned above are connected via APIs or an EDIFACT protocol and distributed via GDSs. So, if an Online Travel Agency (OTA) wants to access flight information, it must connect to a GDS or third-party API for fares and schedules. As a result, airlines can’t get access to customer data and have to deal with fees for GDS distribution. New Distribution Capability (NDC), introduced by IATA, is a new standard that was created in the hope of replacing the existing communication system. The NDC’s main advantage is that it can share the full content from airline API, which enables airlines to access customer information, personalize user experience, and sell ancillaries and seats from one source, bypassing most of the third parties. Today, dozens of airlines and IT companies have adopted NDC capability, but GDS is still the main distributor in the industry. Read our take on the NDC in the corresponding article.

With some basics covered, let’s describe the chain of processes between the moment of booking and baggage reclaim at the destination airport. The whole process of this traveler/airline interaction can be divided into five steps: seat booking, ancillary booking, payment, ticket confirmation, check-in and boarding, and baggage reclaim.

Flight booking

Today, when a traveler or a travel agent books a flight, they have a choice: Use either an indirect or direct booking channel. The first one includes OTAs, like Expedia or Priceline, GDS, if an agent books for the traveler, or metasearch engines, like Kayak or Skyscanner. The second option is a direct booking from an airline website. The choice of booking channel — indirect or direct — determines the slight difference in the process. flight booking management