Enablement of Shopping Capabilities via SE/DC

Digital Connect shopping response provides airline with following information:

• Miles flown per segment.
• Duration of:
  • Leg;
  • Segment;
  • Stop airports:
    • Flight time to the stop airport;
    • Layover duration at the airport.

Information if flight is subjected to governmental approval.

Flights might exist already in schedule, while they are still not yet officially approved – then this information is included in schedules and returned by shopping

• ID of departure and arrival terminal.
• There will be new capabilities to send preferred operating airline in the shopping request:
  • To avoid situation when price shown in the ribbon is lower than any price in the flight matrix. That may happen when codeshare flights with connection have lower price than direct flights. When codeshare connections are not configured in current LCS, flights might be shown on the ribbon but are missing in the flights matrix.
  • To solve this problem, there will be additional information sent in shopping request – preferred operating carrier. This will be either configuration-driven or request-driven.
  • Configuration:
    • NONE – do not send operating carrier;
    • ALL – always send operating carrier;
    • DEFINED – list of origins/destination when operating carrier will be sent;
    • DOMESTIC – send operating carrier for domestic routes.
  • In case the route is marked in master routes configuration as interline – interline partners will always be sent, even if the configuration is set to NONE.
  • Operating carrier in request will override configuration. As operating carrier code is considered storefront airline code (2-letter IATA code).

This functionality works in the following flows:

• The Revenue Booking Flow (B2C);
• The Redemption Booking Flow (RBE);
• The Manage Your Booking – Change Itinerary Flow (MYB: CI) including Loyalty Exchanges.

Prerequisites

• Correct settings of Intellisell rules to return all required information.

Highlights

Additional information - The Revenue Booking Flow (B2C)

1. The airline calls /products/air/search POST to obtain the list of available flights to the passenger. The response will now contain:
   • distance (segment level);
   • departure terminal (segment level);
   • arrival terminal (segment level);
   • subjectToGovernmentApproval (segment level);
   • preferred operating carrier (whole itinerary level);
   • elapsedTime, duration (stopAirport level).
2. The passenger selects a flight.
3. The airline submits /products/air POST to add selected flight to the itinerary.
4. The airline fills shopping cart data /products. The response will now contain:
   • Amount of miles flown per segment.
5. The airline prompts passenger for passenger details e.g. passport information.
6. The airline uses /passengers POST to add passenger to the itinerary.
7. The passenger can continue shopping by selecting seats and ancillaries, according to the airline’s shopping sequence.
8. The airline uses /products/seats operations to show passengers the seats available on the flights they have exchanged and to add any seats selected by the passenger to the itinerary
9. Product cart is updated.
10. 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.
11. When the passenger selects 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 response will now contain:
    • distance (segment level);
    • departure terminal (segment level);
    • arrival terminal (segment level);
    • subjectToGovernmentApproval (segment level);
    • elapsedTime, duration (stopAirport level).
12. The response indicates whether the purchase is successful. The airline formats this information for display to the passenger.
13. The passenger specifies a PNR for review.
14. The airlines submits a /pnr GET request. The airline can format the information for display to the passenger. The response will now contain:
    • distance (segment level);
    • departure terminal (segment level);
    • arrival terminal (segment level);
    • subjectToGovernmentApproval (segment level);
    • elapsedTime, duration (stopAirport level).