Overview

This document describes the Offer, OfferItem, and Service, their structures and main data elements.

Offer, OfferItem, Service concepts

An Offer is defined as a proposal to sell a specific set of products or Services under specific conditions, for a certain price.

The OfferItem is the sellable unit, grouping one or more Services with an associated total price for all included Services for all passengers and all segments referenced.

The Service is the delivery unit, that is the instance of a specific flight or Service Definition as it has been offered (and eventually ordered and consumed) in the context of a specific Offer and/or Order. At the time of shopping, a service can be offered to multiple passengers on a given journey. At time of order, the services should be applied to a single passenger on a single segment.

There are two varieties of Offers across shopping messages:

• Offers

  • Used for Flights (plus any bundled ancillaries).

  • Priced OfferItems are rigid groupings of Services.

  • OfferItems may be marked as mandatory or optional (within the Offer).

  • OfferItem’s price reflects “all included Services for all specified passengers on all specified flight Segments/Legs”.

• A-La-Carte Offers

  • Flexible OfferItem catalogue.

  • A-La-Carte OfferItems are all optional.

  • Intended for Ancillary Services, e.g. meal, extra bag, lounge pass, etc. (cannot contain actual flights).

  • Unit-priced (which also allows the passenger to select different quantities).

  • Defined as “available for any of the associated passengers on any of the associated flight Segments/Legs”.

The contents and price of OfferItems (similarly to OrderItems) are immutable – the Services within cannot be selected/de-selected. The entire OfferItem needs to be purchased as presented in shopping response.

Offer consists of one or more OfferItems. OfferItems can be mandatory (cannot be removed from the Offer) or optional. Each Offer (with the exception of a-la-carte Offers) should have at least one mandatory item within it.

This type of offer is typically returned in the AirShopping or OfferPrice, but also in OrderReshop, OrderQuote, ServiceList & SeatAvailability responses.

Open

Offer Structure

Open

A-La-Carte Offer Structure

Selection of offers

Once constructed, an OfferItem cannot be modified or unbundled.

Enabling a flow by reference, OfferID or OfferID/OfferItemIDs are used in subsequent calls.

Selection of offers are permitted within the OfferExpirationTimeLimit. The length of time an offer will persist in an airline's offer management system for use in subsequent transactions. Upon expiry, the expectation is that the offer is no longer retrievable and the shopping process should begin again. Note the presence of an Offer Time Limit does not indicate either a guarantee of price or inventory against a given OfferItem within the Offer. Should the offer time limit expire, any other time limit also expires unless an Order has been created or changed.

Other time limits criteria are offer attributes that further qualifies the guarantees attached to it. (e.g. InventoryGuaranteeDateTime, PriceGuaranteeTimeLimitDateTime, PaymentTimeLimit).