ONE Order is the concept of a single Customer Order record, holding all data elements obtained and required for order fulfilment across the air travel cycle - such as customer data, order items, payment and billing information, fulfilment data and status.​ 

One reference

A new standardized and expandable reference will become the single access point for customer orders by third parties (interline partners, distribution channels, ground handling agents and airport staff, among others).

One process

All parties will follow a single process to service customers throughout their entire product purchase and delivery experience.

One industry

Travelers

Travelers will no longer need to juggle between different reference numbers and documents. With a single reference number they will be easily recognized by all service providers.

Travel Agents

Travel agents will be able to follow an identical process to book flights and products from airlines, regardless of the airline’s business model or technology capability. This will expediate the service they provide, and will increase productivity.

Airlines

Airlines no longer will need to resort to timely and expensive reconciliation exercises between different references. This will greatly simplify back-office operations for existing and future products. 

Technology Vendors

Technology vendors will be able to deliver real-time information on travelers, and their travel purchases, to their application users. This translates to data consistency and accelerated reporting.

​Further to the endorsement of the IATA Board of Governors at its meeting in December 2015, the initiative is moving into the Industry Standard development phase.

The target for 2016, has been achieved as the IATA Resolution supporting the One Order initiative (Resolution 797) has been adopted by the Passenger Services Conference (PSC).

Industry participants are now contributing to build the standard through the following Governance forums: 

Passenger Distribution Management Group (PDMG)

Passenger Distribution Management Group is comprised of senior airline distribution executives whose responsibilities are to govern the development of the NDC Standard.

PDMG Advisory Forum (PDMG AF)

One Order Taskforce (OOTF)

For more information about One Order, see the below resources:

Official documentation

• Fact Sheet (pdf) (January 2016)
• Program Summary (pdf) (October 2016)

Strategy

• The StB White Paper 2015 (pdf) outlines the overall StB program goals, the status of 2014 White Paper and the outcome of the 2015 StB Think Tank work sessions. Pages 11-12 showcase the opportunities that One Order will bring to the industry.
  

Industry Debates

• Introducing One Order (Youtube) (October 2015) Industry experts discuss whether the airline industry is prepared to embrace One Order. 

Related Articles

• One Order for the passenger's journey (Airlines International) (October 2015)

What is ONE Order?
ONE Order is an industry-led initiative intended to replace the multiple rigid and paper-based booking and ticketing records (i.e.—the flight reservation, e-ticket and electronic miscellaneous document or EMD) by combining the contents into a single and flexible order record. At the same time, it aims to streamline the delivery and accounting methods by using standard order management processes.

Why should an airline move to ONE Order?
ONE Order addresses the inefficient processes and unnecessary costs for airlines caused by having three separate records (Passenger Name Record or PNR; e-ticket, and EMD for things such as ancillary products). Having these disparate records leads to problems for airlines and the industry, such as:

• Confusing and complex processes for customers dealing with multiple references and identifying numbers for different aspects of the same order
• Difficulty for airlines to behave as true retailers
• Poor accuracy, timeliness and visibility of booking data within an airline and with its partners
• Limited ability for airline IT vendors to innovate due to the constraints of legacy data and processes

How do passengers benefit from ONE Order?
ONE Order will eliminate the need for passengers to juggle different reference numbers and documents along their journeys. With ONE Order, the only thing that passengers will need to be instantly recognized by their airline provider(s) is their order number. It will greatly simplify the passenger experience particularly when dealing with travel disruptions or itinerary changes.

Who is impacted?
The main usage of ONE Order is in product service delivery and fulfilment. All entities involved in travel and fulfilment, from the customer to the third-party service providers are impacted. IATA is facilitating industry standard definition across the industry with all these players.

Who is involved in the ONE Order standard definition?
The standard definition is done by the ONE Order taskforce, comprised of airlines, GDSs and technology vendors (for example, revenue accounting and delivery provider systems). It operates under the governance of the Passenger Distribution Management Group (PDMG) within IATA. In October 2016, the Passenger Services Conference (PSC) composed of IATA member airlines, unanimously adopted a standard Resolution that will put the framework for the industry to work with a single Order as opposed to a reservation and an accountable document (e-ticket and EMD).

With ONE Order will e-tickets disappear? What about EMDs?
Yes, gradually. The aim of ONE Order is to replace the notion of E-Ticket and EMD records with order delivery and accounting status values that satisfy the same business requirements in terms of delivery and accounting. All of the information would be comprised within a single unique ONE Order record that the customers would reference.

How would e-ticket issuance, re-issuance and exchange work?
At its core an e-ticket exchange process exists because a paper representing a ticket actually needed to be exchanged with another paper containing updated information. This is not required anymore in a digital world as the same outcome can be achieved with an order management process. The ONE Order record will simply be updated with the latest status of the order in terms of both delivery and accounting.

If there are no e-tickets, how do passengers show that they are in possession of a flight authorization when they arrive at the airport?
The introduction of e-tickets eliminated the need for passengers to physically carry a paper document in order to receive a boarding pass and board the aircraft. Thus, there would be no foreseeable impact to customers, the entitlement to travel could be represented by an itinerary receipt for example.

Can ONE Order be adopted without NDC?
ONE Order is complementing NDC and is extending the capability of the Order Management system. An airline theoretically can choose to implement ONE Order in non-NDC enabled channels (i.e. direct sales), but in order to reap the full benefits of an order management process it is recommended that the two initiatives are implemented together, starting with NDC.

Is ONE Order mandatory?
No, as with NDC, ONE Order is not mandatory

Does ONE Order mean the end of the PNR? How will this affect PNRGOV for example?
ONE Order aims at combining the information residing in PNRs, Tickets, EMDs into a single structured and flexible order record. ONE Order data records will include any data elements required to be passed to government organizations today. In fact, with the new data transmission standard used by ONE Order, data such as PNRGOV could be expanded with richer information and in a more structured way. IATA will continue to facilitate standardization of airline data exchanged with government organizations.

How much will it cost?
Implementation of ONE Order is a large scale transformation project of which the cost and resulting return on investment must be evaluated individually for each airline. Full adoption of ONE Order is a multi-year, multi-stage process that will require close cooperation with industry partners.