Teams argue about this in chat at 2 a.m., and the answer is usually: it depends. Search Architecture: Ranking, Pruning and Repricing sits at the center of how airlines sell, and the mechanics matter. I’ll keep this practical and show the moving parts without hand‑waving.
Behind the jargon there is a straightforward goal: present a sellable option, at a price that makes sense to the customer and to the airline, and commit it reliably. The challenge is the chain of systems in between — caches, hosts, pricers, stock, and settlement — each with different views of the truth.
Draw the flow. Who creates the answer first? Who confirms it? What data do we reuse, and what do we recompute? Writing these steps down turns disagreements into test cases.
Take a simple A–B–C journey request. A seller calls search. A cache answers fast with a candidate. Before we show a price, we confirm with the airline host or offer service. Stock is checked once, at commit, and the order becomes the source of truth for fulfillment. If those steps drift, you see phantom seats, price mismatches, or carts that cannot be fulfilled.