Technical glossary

Airline Retailing Glossary

A technical glossary for airline distribution, revenue management, pricing, Offer & Order, NDC, EDIFACT, ATPCO, and modern retailing architecture. Link to these terms from articles and tools to reinforce topical authority and help readers move from concept to implementation.

Distribution and messaging

NDC: IATA XML distribution standard for modern airline offers, orders, and servicing.
EDIFACT: Legacy structured messaging used across airline distribution and interline workflows.
PADIS: IATA passenger and airport data interchange standards used in airline messaging.
Type A messaging: Interactive host messaging used for real-time reservations flows.
Type B messaging: Store-and-forward airline messaging used for operational and industry communications.
AirShoppingRQ/RS: NDC shopping request and response messages.
OfferPriceRQ/RS: NDC pricing messages for validating and pricing selected offers.
OrderCreateRQ: NDC message used to create an order after offer acceptance.
OrderViewRS: NDC order response containing current order state and items.
ServiceListRQ/RS: NDC messages for ancillary and service offers.

Inventory and revenue management

AVS/NAVS: Availability status messages used in distribution and host availability synchronization.
O&D controls: Origin and destination controls that optimize availability by journey, not just segment.
Married segment logic: Availability control where segment availability depends on the full itinerary.
RBD: Reservation booking designator, commonly used as the booking class control surface.
EMSRb: Expected marginal seat revenue method used to calculate fare class protection.
Booking limit: Maximum bookings accepted for a fare class or product control bucket.
Spoilage: Empty seat inventory that could have been sold.
Denied boarding cost: Cost caused by overbooking when more passengers show than seats available.

Offer and Order

PNR: Passenger name record, the legacy reservation record used across airline systems.
e-ticket: Ticketing document with coupons used for travel entitlement and settlement.
EMD-A / EMD-S: Electronic miscellaneous documents for ancillary and service fulfilment.
Order item: Product or service component within an order-native retailing record.
Entitlement: Customer right to receive travel or service fulfilment.
Order lifecycle: Creation, payment, fulfilment, change, refund, cancellation, and settlement events.