ONE Order
IATA’s ONE Order program builds on the digital transformation made possible by NDC. In short, ONE Order replaces a paper-based framework with digitized order management processes. E-tickets, passenger name records (PNR), and electronic miscellaneous documents (EMD) have been digitized for some time. But until ONE Order, they remained mired in the rigid booking, ticketing, delivery, and accounting methods designed for the paper era.
ONE Order instead generates a single customer record holding all the data required for air travel order fulfillment.
For travelers, that means simplicity. They will no longer need to juggle different reference numbers and documents when checking in or making changes to their itinerary. With a single reference number, travelers will be easily recognized by all service providers. Disruptions and rebookings will be easier to manage as well.
Travel agents, too, will benefit from ONE Order. They’ll be able to employ a single, identical process to book flights and products for all airlines regardless of an airline’s business model or technological capability.
Airlines, meanwhile, won’t have any further need of relying on the time-consuming and expensive reconciliation of different reference numbers. This will help them streamline their reservation management and financial processes, eliminate their dependency on industry-specific accounting solutions, and simplify their interlining delivery and accounting processes. Airlines also will be able to seamlessly sell, account for, and track the delivery of flight and non-flight products and services in a fashion similar to that of any retailer.
The first ONE Order message schema was released in September 2018 following the conclusion of the ONE Order trials that commenced at the end of 2017. To date, nine ONE Order trials have been conducted.
And in January 2019, IATA launched the ONE Order certification registry. The registry ensures the transparency of ONE Order deployments, validates the capabilities of the program’s supporting IT providers, drives ONE Order’s innovation, monitors the program’s progress, and bolsters ONE Order adoption.
The move to ONE Order is a large-scale transformation project encompassing airlines’ internal processes and procedures and their organizational structure. It also impacts also interactions between airlines and other industry partners including passenger service system suppliers, airline e-commerce platforms, travel agents, global distribution systems and others. As such, it appears likely that there will be a transition period, during which airlines will need to operate with both existing legacy processes as well as the new standards.