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Digital Connect 22.11 Release Notes

Release Identification

Release Version Type (Version, Update, or Patch) Date Approved by Description of Change
22.11 Version November 2022

 

 Software updated

Enhancements

Digital Connect introduces the following enhancements:

  • Business class upgrade
  • Support for 3D Secure in stateless payment service

Enhancements

Business class upgrade

Digital Connect introduces a new feature that allows airlines to offer their Frequent Flyer (FF) passengers an enhanced ability to upgrade their itinerary from economy class to business class utilizing their upgrade certificates.

Note: This feature is available only to airlines which permit all revenue RBDs (booking classes) to be used for upgrade purposes.

The objective of this feature is to create a cabin upgrade product that allows upgrades post booking through Manager Your Booking (MYB) before check-in, as part of passenger self-service that benefits the airlines by reducing the number of call center interactions.

The feature needs to handle the requirements for shopping and fulfillment of the upgrades this requirement was fulfilled by creating two endpoints:

  • Stateless Upgrade Availability service (/upgradeFlight/getEligibleOffers): to check number of upgrade certificates user holds and to compute the number of certificates needed for all segments and for all passengers excluding infants
  • Stateless Upgrade Fulfilment service (/upgradeFlight/fufillOffer): to cancel and rebook the flight from economy to business class, deduct certificates from loyalty account, sell the upgrade ancillary, issue an Electronic Miscellaneous Documents (EMD) for the upgrade and the accounting fields with details of the Upgrade Ancillary. 

Note: For UK, only flights issue EMD for “APD Tax difference ancillary”.

Airlines have traditionally allowed cabin upgrades closer to flight departure. This enhancement allows the cabin upgrade to occur much earlier in the reservation flow, shortly after the PNR is ticketed. 
The enhancement handles requirements for shopping and fulfillment of the upgrade as well as post-upgrade changes to the PNR. After purchase of a PNR in an economy cabin, the passenger can shop and fulfill an upgrade to the business class cabin. After the upgrade is completed, in specific cases, the passenger also has the capability to modify their PNRs.

At a high level, the process flow involves the following steps: 

  1. A passenger purchases a trip in the economy cabin via the airline’s website or GDS. 
  2. Once the reservation is confirmed and fulfilled, the passenger will have the option to upgrade using the certificates. The passenger can select a business class upgrade from the Trip Options tab and will be redirected to the tier upgrade landing page.
  3. Digital Connect downline shops for the upgrades and displays the upgrade offers to the customer. 
  4. The passenger selects which flights he wishes to upgrade. 
  5. Digital Connect makes the necessary downline calls to fulfill the upgrade.

The tier upgrade fulfillment solution is unique because it does not exchange the ticket after the PNR itinerary is upgraded. The result is a PNR itinerary with a flight in an upgraded RBD and a VCR with a coupon in an economy RBD and Fare Basis Code.

Note: To use this functionality, the carrier will need to configure their ESV table to prevent the VCR from getting out of SYNC to the flight segment and file and/or publish ancillaries that will determine how many certificates will be necessary for each passenger, for each upgrade.

Prerequisites

  • The shopping solution is dependent on the Dedicated Mint Upgrade PCC and Mint Upgrade Ancillary filing solutions. 
  • Dynamic awards need to be enabled.

Limitations

  • TravelBank cannot be used to pay for upgrades.
  • Taxes cannott be paid with points only with monetary value.
  • Split PNR functionality is not supported.
  • Logged in user must be one of the passengers in the PNR.
  • Logged in member is the one paying for the upgrade.

Support for 3D Secure v2 in stateless payment service

Digital Connect introduces support for the 3D Secure 2 (3DS2) authentication protocol for online card payments in its stateless payment service. 3DS2 is designed to improve upon 3D Secure 1 (3DS1) by addressing the old protocol's pain points and delivering a much smoother, frictionless and integrated user experience.

The enhancement applies to the stateless payment service - /authorizePayment

A new service - /cancelAuthorization is introduced. It allows to expose a Declined status to the user. If the response contains a Declined status, the user can decide should the authorization be cancelled.

Single and Multiple Forms of Payment are supported.

Prerequisites

None.

Limitations

Fraud Check is disabled for 3DS payments and and Auth action code is sent instead of OrchPayment.