The first digital native airline

Riyadh Air is Saudi Arabia's second national carrier, building a full-service, wide-body and narrow body network with no legacy systems and no inherited infrastructure. It is the first full-service carrier to operate on fully native Offer and Order technology, with the Order as the single source of truth across every touchpoint.

That foundation changes what every connected system needs to do, including the Delivery Management System responsible for executing the airport journey.

Challenge

Retail only creates value when it carries through to operations

Riyadh Air adopted IATA's ONE Order standard as its operating model, replacing the traditional booking record with a single digital order that spans both commercial and operational teams. Every touchpoint, from ancillary purchase to boarding gate, needs to read from and write back to that same record in real time.

The airline needed a Delivery Management System that could operate natively within this model while remaining interoperable with the legacy infrastructure encountered across its global network — partner airlines, codeshare arrangements, interline connections, and existing airport systems. The default stays order-centric; legacy documents are produced only for journeys that still require them.

The architecture had to be event-driven, API-led, and modular, with the airline remaining in control as the integrator, and each component replaceable without destabilising the stack.

No system built for this existed. It had to be designed and built alongside the airline.

Implementation

Ink was selected as Riyadh Air's delivery management partner on the basis of proven production experience with IATA ONE Order — real delivery, at scale, already running.

"To build a digital native airline requires a mindset that challenges the convention of traditional travel. Is to be digital from all touchpoints, from the curbside to the gate to the destination." — Tony Douglas, CEO, Riyadh Air

Riyadh Air's architecture is built on a deliberate separation of concerns. One of the core goals was to disentangle business logic from legacy messaging standards — the entanglement that makes traditional PSS systems so difficult to change. Each capability sits with the vendor best positioned to deliver it. Ink provides departure and flight management, including check-in, boarding, load control. FLYR provides Offer and Order Management. Settlement runs through Sutherland and Oracle. AI orchestration is handled via an IBM Watson layer built in-house by Riyadh Air. The integration platform is cloud-agnostic, built on Red Hat OpenShift.

Ink integrates directly with the Order Management System. Airport actions, check-in, seat changes, ancillary fulfilment, boarding status, write back to the same order record that commercial teams operate from. Retail and operations see the same truth. Legacy documents are produced only for partner itineraries that still require them.

Ink delivery system covers the full airport journey:

Pre-flight, at home. Online check-in, ancillary shopping, document collection, and Ready to Fly preparation — all feeding back into the Order.

Pre-flight, at the airport. Kiosk check-in with integrated tag printing, bag drop, counter-based agent handling, ancillary selling, lounge access, border control and APIS data, and boarding — all synchronised with the Order via a Common Integration Layer.

Mobile passenger handling. Agents operating from mobile devices, with full access to the Order and the ability to update it at the edge, without dependency on fixed counters.

Automated boarding gates. Order-synchronised and biometric-ready.

The airline stays in control as the integrator throughout. Each component operates behind a stable interface — replaceable without destabilising the passenger journey.

‍Results

Customer voice

"Everyone understands that we need to transition from traditional ticketing to an advanced AI capability. To achieve this, we need effective servicing and fulfilment for each Order. So, we're working alongside Ink to deploy the Delivery platform." — Abe Dev, VP Digital Tech & Innovation, Riyadh Air.

What's next

Riyadh Air is already operating. With the first route, Riyadh-London live, the Offer-Order-Delivery stack is running in production — Ink's Delivery System, and the full multi-vendor architecture aligned with IATA's modern retailing framework. As the network scales, each component extends independently. The foundation is in place.

The ambition ahead is significant. Riyadh Air is targeting 100+ destinations and 100 aircraft by 2030, connecting guests across six continents under Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 programme. Every route added, every passenger processed, runs through the same architecture — kiosk, counter, mobile, web, automated boarding gates, and bag drop all synchronised through a single Order, and delivered through Ink. 

Tony Douglas, CEO, Riyadh Air: “The partnership will deliver a truly personalised and seamless travel experience, exceeding expectations at every step of the journey and offering our guests a virtually unlimited range of options at every touchpoint.”