What are offers and orders in airline retailing?
Offers and orders is the airline retailing model in which the airline builds a priced, time-limited offer for each request and, once accepted, manages the purchase as a single order.
An offer is a priced proposal the airline is willing to sell — flights, a fare brand and optional services — valid for a limited time. An order is created when the customer accepts the offer, and it records what was bought and the state of each item.
How it differs from fares and tickets
In the traditional model, fares are filed in advance and combined with availability by a GDS. The result is a PNR plus tickets. In the offer model, the airline prices dynamically at request time, which enables personalisation, bundles and continuous pricing.
Consequences for platforms
Offers expire, so a booking engine must respect offer lifetimes and re-price before purchase. Caching works differently too: an offer ID is tied to a specific request and cannot be reused across customers in the way a cached fare can.