Airlines talk retail transformation, but still treat servicing as separate. True retailing won’t succeed until every product — from flights to hotels — is designed for delivery.
Airlines have been trying to “think like retailers” for more than a decade. But despite progress on storefronts, pricing, and ancillaries, the gap between airline retailing and modern digital commerce remains wide.
Customers who shop with Amazon, Uber, or even food delivery apps experience real-time pricing, personalised offers, seamless fulfilment, and instant updates when something changes. Airline retail? Often static, fragmented, and reliant on a patchwork of legacy systems — PNRs, EMDs, DCSs — that were never designed for this kind of retail flow.
The problem isn’t just outdated tech. It’s that airlines still separate the act of selling from the act of servicing. Until that changes, true retail transformation can’t happen.
Servicing is the product
In a legacy airline model, selling ends with a ticket. After that, servicing is often someone else’s job — handled by airport staff, call centres, or partners with limited visibility into what was sold.
But in modern retail, every product is a service, and every service must be delivered, tracked, and supported. Whether it's a hotel room, a seat upgrade, or a bundled insurance product, if it’s in the cart, it must be designed to be delivered.
Many airline retail initiatives fall short in this area. They can display content and push offers, but they don’t ensure that the service behind those offers can be fulfilled cleanly, especially when third-party content is involved.
Modern retailing doesn’t separate the product from its delivery. Every item is sold with servicing built in:
- Can it be changed or cancelled?
- Who supports it?
- What happens when it fails?
Retail products come with fulfilment logic. Airline products rarely do.
The takeaway? If it’s in the order, the airline owns the experience.
ONE Order changes the structure, but not the outcome
ONE Order provides the technical foundation for unified, serviceable retailing. Orders replace fragmented records with a single source of truth. Everything the customer buys — flights, ancillaries, third-party content — lives in one structured, supportable record.
Transitioning to ONE Order offers a chance to rewire how airlines design and deliver their services.
A product isn’t “offer-ready” unless it’s also “service-ready.” Without fulfilment logic, partner visibility, and support flows, an offer is just a promise waiting to break.
Designing for delivery
The biggest shift isn’t technical — it’s operational and strategic. Airlines must adopt the mindset of companies that have mastered retail through service:
- Every product must have a delivery model: not just how it’s sold, but how it’s fulfilled, changed, or cancelled
- Support teams need full order context: not just for flights, but for every line in the order
- Third-party content must come with accountability: data exchange, status visibility, and shared resolution
- Ops and servicing must be part of product design, not just post-sale escalation
- Servicing must scale — safely, reliably, and across partners, channels, and systems
Amazon didn’t become Amazon because of dynamic offers — it became what it is today because of best-in-class delivery discipline. It doesn’t sell what it can’t fulfil, and it owns the service all the way through.
In aviation, that same distinction is achievable with Delivering Orders — a model that connects what’s sold with how it’s tracked, serviced, and resolved. Customers reward getting this right with loyalty and priceless referrals.
The leadership question: What are we really building?
Offer/Order is positioned as a technology upgrade or a commercial initiative. But the real opportunity — and challenge — is operational. Leaders must ask:
Are we building a storefront that converts, or a retail model that delivers?
In referencing Amazon, airlines need to learn from their approach: servicing is not a department — it’s part of the product. Until that shift happens, airline retailing won't fulfil its promise.
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