Airline retailing is moving from monolithic stacks to modular components that can be adopted incrementally. The question is whether those components, built by different vendors, actually connect. Ink Innovation, Datalex and PROS tested that across Offer, Order and Delivery, with no PSS in the stack and the airline as the integration point.

The project is part of the IATA Airline Retailing Consortium's Modularity in Action programme, where more than 20 providers formed eight teams to build live, interoperable demonstrations aligned with the industry's Reference Business Architecture (RP 1786a).

Three specialists. One flow. The airline in control.

PROS provides offer management and dynamic pricing, bringing shopping intelligence and personalised ancillary pricing to the retail layer.

Datalex builds order management platforms for airlines, creating and maintaining the single order record that connects commercial and operational systems.

Ink Innovation runs the airport delivery layer, executing check-in, ancillary fulfilment and boarding against the order, with delivery status flowing back in real time.

The airline acts as the system integrator throughout, keeping control of the sequence and avoiding a single-vendor dependency.

Challenge

Modular retailing only works if the components actually connect.

Airlines know they need to modernise. Replacing a PSS all at once is too large a risk. The incremental approach, adding modular components domain by domain, is more practical. But it only holds if Offer, Order and Delivery from different providers can share state without a proprietary integration layer in between.

Dynamic pricing has to feed into the order. The order has to reach the airport. Delivery actions have to write back to the same record commercial teams see. Each handoff is a potential point of failure. This project tested all of them.

Implementation

Two use cases. One connected flow.

Offer management and dynamic pricing. PROS returns priced offers based on live shopping requests, including flight and ancillary combinations with contextual pricing. The offer layer operates independently, producing only what the order system needs to consume.

Order creation and management. Datalex creates the order on acceptance and maintains its state throughout the journey. Flights and ancillaries are held as explicit order items. The order is the single source of truth, shared via API with delivery.

Service Delivery. The order loads into Ink's delivery environment at the airport. Agents see what was sold, handle check-in and bag drop, add ancillaries, print boarding passes and bag tags, and update delivery status. Every action writes back to Datalex's order management. Where relevant, updates inform subsequent offers handled by PROS. Legacy documents are produced only when a journey requires them.

Two use cases were demonstrated. The first covers the full shopping and ordering flow: a passenger searches, PROS returns a priced offer, Datalex creates the order, payment is recorded. The second covers delivery-side servicing: the order loads at the airport, agents service it through Ink, and status updates flow back to the order record and offer layer. Retail and operations stay on the same data.

Results

Partners' voices

What's next

Separating Offer, Order and Delivery into modular components does not weaken the end-to-end flow. This proof of concept shows it enables it. Airlines can add or replace components without breaking the journey, which increases choice and reduces the risk of any single change. For carriers looking to move incrementally toward modern retailing, the components are available, the standards exist, and the integration pattern is proven.