The airline industry has long struggled with fragmented systems and outdated processes that complicate even the simplest travel transactions. Enter IATA ONE Order, a transformative airline retailing initiative designed to modernize how airlines manage offers, orders, fulfillment, and accounting. If you’ve ever wondered why airline systems feel unnecessarily complex, ONE Order is the solution the industry has been moving toward.
Understanding ONE Order: A Single Source of Truth
ONE Order is an industry-led initiative based on IATA Resolution 797, created to simplify airline reservation, delivery, and accounting systems. At its core, ONE Order replaces decades-old, disconnected airline records with a single customer order record, enabling true order-based airline retailing.
Traditionally, when a passenger books a flight, airlines create multiple records to manage the journey: Passenger Name Records (PNR), electronic tickets (ETKT), and Electronic Miscellaneous Documents (EMD) for ancillaries such as baggage, seat selection, or upgrades. Managing these separate records increases operational costs, reconciliation effort, and service complexity.
ONE Order eliminates this fragmentation. Instead of multiple references, all products and services are consolidated into one Order ID. This unified order record contains everything required for fulfillment, including flight details, ancillary services, payment status, and delivery confirmation, creating a true single source of truth for airlines and travel sellers.
This shift aligns closely with modern offer and order management in airlines, where airlines move away from document-based workflows toward unified digital retailing.
The Five Guiding Principles of ONE Order
The development of ONE Order follows five fundamental principles that ensure consistency and effectiveness across the industry:
Single Reference: ONE Order creates one standardized, expandable reference document that replaces all legacy reservation and ticketing records. This becomes the single access point for everyone who needs to interact with the booking from interline partners and distribution channels to ground handlers and airport staff.
Data Carry Over: All relevant business data currently stored in legacy PNR, ETKT, and EMD records must be transferred to the order record. Nothing gets lost in the transition.
Single Control: Customers receive one order reference that’s controlled and managed by the Offer Responsible Airline (ORA). This airline takes ownership of the entire customer journey.
Single Source of Truth: The ORA’s Order Management System (OMS) holds the definitive version of all data related to products, services, customer information, and entitlement or delivery status. No more conflicting information across different systems.
Streamlined Accounting: Accounting processes rely on data validated when the order is created or modified, with all required information captured within the order itself. This eliminates the need for complex reconciliation processes.
These principles support a broader shift toward scalable and future-ready airline distribution strategies.
How ONE Order Connects with NDC
ONE Order doesn’t exist in isolation; it builds upon the New Distribution Capability (NDC) framework. NDC is an XML-based data transmission standard that modernizes airline distribution by enabling airlines to create and manage personalized offers with dynamic pricing and merchandising capabilities. While NDC focuses on enhanced distribution through an NDC portal or other channels, ONE Order tackles the order management side of the equation.
Together, these standards represent IATA’s Enhanced and Simplified Distribution initiative. NDC enables airlines to present rich, personalized offers to customers across all distribution channels, while ONE Order ensures that those purchases are managed efficiently through a single, unified record. The NDC portal becomes the gateway for travel sellers to access these modern capabilities.
To understand how airlines operationalize this model, it’s useful to explore a step-by-step guide about NDC for airlines.
Real-World Benefits of ONE Order
The advantages of ONE Order extend across the entire travel ecosystem:
For Travelers: Imagine booking a complex journey with multiple flights and ancillary services. Instead of receiving separate confirmation numbers for your ticket, baggage, seat selection, and lounge access, you get one order reference. If you need to make changes or check in, that single reference is recognized by all service providers. No more digging through emails to find the right confirmation code.
For Travel Agents: Agents can follow an identical process to book flights and products from any airline, regardless of the carrier’s underlying technology or business model. This standardization dramatically increases productivity and speeds up customer service. Whether working through an NDC portal or traditional systems, the workflow remains consistent.
For Airlines: The financial benefits are substantial. Airlines eliminate the time-consuming and expensive process of reconciling data between PNRs, e-tickets, and EMDs. The centralized order model streamlines back-office processes and reduces operational costs. Additionally, ONE Order enables network carriers to partner more easily with ticketless carriers like low-cost airlines, expanding partnership opportunities.
For Delivery Providers: Ground handlers and other service providers receive complete, structured information about passengers and their services. This streamlines delivery processes and simplifies accounting, making operations more efficient across the board.
Making the Transition: From Legacy to Order One
Moving from legacy systems to a full order one implementation is a significant undertaking. Airlines are pursuing different pathways based on their technical capabilities and business priorities.
Most airlines begin by creating an order repository. NDC channels and web or mobile channels are typically the easiest starting points for transitioning to order records, as they’re already more modern and flexible than traditional systems.
The GDS channel presents the biggest challenge. Migration is expected to take considerable time, managed either by shifting sales to NDC or deploying new GDS aggregator products. Simply copying legacy PNRs into order records provides little value because it misses the sophisticated retail and offer management capabilities that make ONE Order powerful.
Airlines have two main architectural approaches. The encapsulation method creates a wrapper around existing legacy records to expose them as ONE Order to external parties. This minimizes data duplication but can suffer from performance issues. Alternatively, airlines can implement a pure Order Management System that handles the full digital retailing platform without relying on traditional legacy systems.
A Glimpse of Success: Real-World Implementation
A 2020 industry pilot involving a leading full-service network carrier and a ticketless low-cost airline demonstrated the practical potential of ONE Order. Leveraging NDC-based schemas, disrupted passengers were rebooked in just three clicks and under three minutes. This collaboration highlighted how ONE Order standards can bridge different airline business models, eliminate the complexity of managing multiple records, and enable seamless interline cooperation.
The Future of Airline Distribution
ONE Order represents more than just a technical upgrade – it’s a fundamental shift toward customer-centric, omnichannel architecture. As more airlines adopt these standards and integrate them with NDC portal technologies, travelers will experience smoother bookings, easier modifications, and more personalized service options.
The journey to 100% offers and orders will take time, but the direction is clear. The airline industry is moving away from channel-driven, siloed systems toward unified order management that puts customer experience first. For airlines, travel agents, and travelers alike, ONE Order promises a simpler, more efficient future in air travel.
