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Online Companion Fares

Airlines offer multiple ways to purchase airfares. One of these ways is through a companion fare which is a promotional airfare under which a second ticket (for the same flight and for the same date) is sold at a discount. A discount can be a percentage off, like 50% to 100% or a flat rate such as $99.

Airlines offer this for Economy and Business class to boost booking in markets and during times of the year where travel purchases may be historically lower.

By using this feature airlines will be able to file fares for companion fare discounts and their travelers will be able to purchase those itineraries online:

  • Airline will control when companion fares will be offered and any restrictions associated with the fare.
  • Companion fare restrictions, such as companion fare not eligible on already discounted fares, are controlled by inventory systems. No manipulation of fare returned will be performed by Digital Connect.

While Sabre has supported the IATA standard Passenger Types for companion fares, CMA and CMP, the online booking channel did not fully support all of the display requirements to disclose the companion fare. With this enhancement search request accepts new passenger types, CMA & CMP and use those for shopping. The service will return flights that have companion fares filed. If both companion and non-companion fares are filed, service will only return the companion fares, or service will return all adult fares if no companion fares are filed and an indicator that no companion fares were found. Only the air portion of travel will use the CMA/CMP passenger types. All other items (insurance, ancillaries, seats, cars, etc.) will use the ADT passenger type.

  • The service only handles the CMA/CMP combination for adult passengers in a booking. Both must be present and no other adult passenger type can be present. This will limit companion fares to a single one per booking. Children and infants can accompany a companion booking based on the same restrictions in place for the airline.
  • Passenger types cannot be mixed in a booking so all travel must be of companion fares (for adults) or standard adult fares. This functionality will prevent mixed fares from appearing within the same itinerary, i.e. an outbound flight has companion fares and an inbound flight has adult fares, the adult fares will not be offered.

This functionality applies to the following flows:

  • The Revenue Booking Flow (B2C) - including Book Now Pay Later (BNPL);
  • The Manage Your Booking – Book Now Pay Later Flow (MYB: BNPL);
  • The Manage Your Booking – Cancel and Refund (MYB: CR):
    A companion booking can be cancelled within the restraints of the current services. For full functionality of a cancellation, the travel bank creation functionality must be completed.
  • The Manage Your Booking - Modify Trip Options Flow (MYB: MTO).

Prerequisites

  • Airline has filed companion fares using the standard IATA passenger types of CMA and CMP.
  • Airline has activated AER in support of any cancel within Digital Connect. Exchanges are out of scope.

Limitations

  • Metasearch is not supported.
  • Strike through pricing and mark up pricing is not supported.
  • Interline and codeshare flights are not supported.
  • Redemption bookings are not supported.
  • Upsell and upgrade are not supported.
  • Post booking upgrades: FFU and FQTU are not supported
  • Exchanges are not supported.
  • Agency bookings are not supported.
  • Negotiated fares are not supported.
  • Bundled itineraries are not supported.
  • Fare basis codes are not supported for pricing of companion fares. This limits the ability to offer companion fares on multiple brands.

Highlights

When a shopping request is made:

  • If only companion fares are returned from IntelliSell then all fares are returned by Digital Connect.
  • If both companion fares and adult fares are returned by IntelliSell then only companion fares are returned by Digital Connect with a message indicating that adult fares were removed from the results.
  • If only adult fares are returned by IntelliSell then adult fares are returned by Digital Connect with a message indicating that no companion fares were found and full fares are being returned. This allows a booking to be continued.

The Revenue Booking Flow (B2C)

  1. The airline obtains search criteria from the passenger and submits a /products/air/search request, POST operation to get a list of flights matching the search criteria.
    • Search Flight API has been updated to accommodate passing of companion passenger types: CMA (adult with companion) and CMP (adult companion).
      • Maximum of two adult passengers allowed in a companion fare booking (both must be present): CMA and CMP.
      • No other adult passenger type can be in the booking. This includes adult, military, senior, etc.
      • Children and infants can be included up to current rules and limitations.
      • New passenger types should be added in the PassengerTypes table.
  2. Airline UI displays the returned flights to the passenger on the Flights page.
  3. After the passenger selects one or more flights, the airline submits the /products/air POST operation to add the flight(s) to the itinerary and store the itinerary in the session.
    • For companion fares it has to be priced by brand (doesn't support by farebasis code). The configuration (sat.passenger.companion.ignoreFareBasisCodeInReprice) has to be enabled to ignore farebasis code being passed in SE RepriceRQ.
      Note: For airlines utilizing D and own their own UI, the airline will facilitate the messaging and navigation of where the passenger lands if there are no fares available for the CMA and CMP passenger types.
  4. The airline prompts passenger for passenger details e.g. passport information.
  5. The airline uses /passengers POST to add passenger to the itinerary.
    • For a companion fare search type the passenger type has to be CMA and CMP, not Adult.
    • The airline will also have an ability to add configuration for CMA/CMP specific passenger type to make the certain field in passenger service as required or not.
  6. The airline calls /products/ancillaries GET to obtain list of ancillaries available for the currently selected itinerary.
    The airline formats information about available ancillaries to the passenger.
    • Ancillary shopping can be done as adult or companion based on a configuration (sat.passenger.companion.ancillaries.shopByCompanionType). If this configuration is disabled, then ancillary shopping will be done based on the passenger type specified in configuration "sat.passenger.companion.fallbackPassengerType", by default it is "ADT".
    • Regardless of ancillary shopping is done by adult or CMA/CMP passenger type, the JSON response for GET ancillary will be converted it to CMA/CMP (to support the requirement when ancillaries are not filed for companion passenger types and airlines wants to sell ancillaries with adult price without any discounts compare to airfare).
  7. When the passenger selects ancillaries the airline calls /products/ancillaries POST to add ancillaries selected by the passenger to the itinerary.
    • In order to successful POST of ancillary, passenger types CMA/CMP has to be added in SSR.json.
  8. The airline calls /products/seats GET to obtain Seat Map for the currently selected itinerary.
    The airline formats Seat Map to the passenger.
  9. When the passenger selects seats, the airline calls POST /products/seats to add seats selected by the passenger to the itinerary.
    • Similar to ancillaries, an airline can choose to offer seats with an adult or companion fare. This can be accomplished by configuration (sat.passenger.companion.seats.shopByCompanionType=false).
    • GetSeatMapRS with ADULT will be converted to CMA/CMP in GET /products/seats JSON response.
  10. The airline can call /products GET operation to obtain current list, with prices of products that the passenger has added to the itinerary and use this information to build and display a shopping cart.
    • Baggage information in products/cart will have passenger types as CMA/CMP. Similarly, products will have base fare breakdown for passenger types CMA/CMP, same apply for seats and ancillaries also. There will not be ADT or ADULT passenger type returned in any scenarios if it's a companion itinerary.
    • Note: For airlines utilizing Digital Connect and own their own UI, the Digital Connect solution will provide the data to support the price breakdown in the cart and payment summaries.
  11. When the passenger indicates that shopping is complete the airline obtains available payment options for the current itinerary by calling /paymentOptions GET.
    The airline can format the information for display to the passenger.
  12. When the passenger selects their form of payment, completes the payment and decides to purchase, the airline initiates the purchase and ticketing process by calling /purchase POST. If authorization is successful, the /purchase service will create a PNR, EMD(s), etc.
    • The PNR will have passenger type as CMA and CMP instead of ADT for companion itineraries..
  13. The response indicates whether the purchase is successful.
    The airline formats this information for display to the passenger.

Error Handling

  1. Shopping Request /products/air/search POST

    If passenger types include other adult passenger types in the request, then Digital Connect displays an error message enabling the airline to communicate to their passengers (via Airline UI) that these passenger types are not combinable with other passenger types.
  2. Display Fares /products/air POST

    The following error message will be returned in select flight response (/products/air POST) when a companion fare is sent to re-price and the response is for a different passenger type (other than CMA/CMP):
    • If there are no fares available for those passenger types, then Digital Connect displays an error message enabling the airline to communicate to their passengers (via Airline UI) that companion fares are not available for the search criteria submitted.
    • If there are no fares available for those passenger types, then Digital Connect displays the standard adult fares for the search criteria submitted by the passenger and shows warning message that "no CMA/CMP fare available ADT fare applicable".

Note: For airlines utilizing Digital Connect and own their own UI, the airline will facilitate the messaging and navigation of where the passenger lands if there are no fares available for the CMA and CMP.

Blocking Post-booking Flows:

  • New rule has been created to support enabling or disabling B2C: Upgrade, B2C: Upsell, MYB: CI and MYB: FFU/FQTU flows. For this feature the configuration needs to be disabled and a message needs to be shown to the passenger to contact the Call Center.
  • PNR will hold the CMA/CMP passenger types to use this rule.