IATA Defines Live: Order as Master Record

Eric Marketts

Welcome to the V1 Airline Retailing Report. I'm Eric Marketts.

Steph Nell

And I'm Steph Nell.

Eric Marketts

If you're new, every week we take the news on how airlines sell, explain how it works, and then argue about what it means.

Steph Nell

Mostly the arguing.

Eric Marketts

Mostly the arguing. Last week we told you IATA, the airline industry association, says seven airlines are live or implementing Orders. And that it named none of them.

Steph Nell

This week IATA did something more useful, in a different document. It wrote down what "live" has to mean. A white paper from this October says airlines can only be considered live with what it calls Native Orders, quote, when the Order serves as the master record for sales.

Eric Marketts

Master record for sales. Okay. For anyone new, an Order is the single record of everything a customer bought, flight, seat, bag, in one place. And that's a higher bar than the one we used last week.

Steph Nell

It is. Last week I defined live as customers buying through Orders today. IATA's wording is tighter than mine. So I'm not correcting anything. I'm upgrading the ruler.

Eric Marketts

And here's why the ruler matters. Since May of last year, airlines and technology vendors have been announcing firsts. First native Order. First airline built on Offer and Order, the newer way of selling that replaces the reservation-plus-ticket stack. First this, first that.

Steph Nell

And now there's a written test. What nobody has published is who passes it. IATA included.

Eric Marketts

Before we go on, one picture. Think of a master record as the original document. Everything else is a photocopy. When something changes, you fix the original, and the photocopies catch up.

Steph Nell

In a Native Order, the Order is created first, and the older airline reservation system gets a copy. With what's called a bridge, it runs the other way. The old reservation comes first and gets translated into an Order. Same trip, opposite original.

Eric Marketts

So the question for the first and last stories is which one is the original.

Steph Nell

Three stories. First, what live means, and who we can say meets it. Second, the week's biggest airline data story. Airlines say Amadeus told them there were traces of outside access to reservation data over about three years.

Eric Marketts

We'll go slowly on that one, because the facts are narrower than the headlines.

Steph Nell

And third, why a trip that crosses two airlines may have to wait for the slower airline. Let's start with the test.

Eric Marketts

I'm going to open with the objection, because somebody is already thinking it. Isn't this semantics? It's a disclaimed white paper. IATA says right on page two that it's a thought piece, not a recommendation. The idea of a native Order isn't new. And Finnair already qualifies.

Steph Nell

That's the best version of the objection, so let me take it in pieces. First, you're right about the disclaimer. IATA says the paper is a thought piece, it doesn't endorse or recommend anything in it, and some sources weren't independently verified. So this is not a rule. Nobody has to report against it.

Eric Marketts

Score one for me!

Steph Nell

Second, you're right that the idea isn't new. IATA's own survey deck from last year already defined live. At least ten thousand transactions with the new record as the master, in full production, not a pilot.

Eric Marketts

So it's old news.

Steph Nell

Here's my answer. The value isn't that IATA moved the bar. It's that IATA now names the rungs. Live stops being a yes or no. The paper says that after sales, the Order can also become the master for servicing, meaning changes and refunds. Then for accounting and settlement. Then for delivery, which is actually flying you. Then for a new product language, meaning a catalog instead of filed fares. Then for downstream uses like reporting and customer data.

Eric Marketts

Five more steps after sales.

Steph Nell

Five. And the paper says the sequence is each airline's choice. So the honest question stops being "are you live." It becomes "live at which rung, in which channel." Nobody publishes that. IATA included.

Eric Marketts

Okay, I'll give you that one. But let me define terms for the listener, because we've thrown a lot at them.

Steph Nell

Please.

Eric Marketts

P-N-R. Passenger name record. The reservation. The thing at the center of how airlines have worked for decades.

Steph Nell

P-S-S is the passenger service system, the airline's core system for reservations, inventory and check-in. An Order Management System, or O-M-S, is the newer system built around the Order. And the B-S-P, the Billing and Settlement Plan, is how travel agency sales get settled with airlines. It runs on tickets today.

Eric Marketts

So a Native Order is created in the Order system first, then synchronized to the old reservation system while both still exist.

Steph Nell

That's the paper's description, yes. And here's a little history for the skeptics. "Native Order" began as a vendor milestone. In May 2025, Amadeus and Finnair said a Finnair booking on May 5 was the first native Order in the world. Helsinki to London, on finnair.com. That's their claim. We haven't seen it independently confirmed.

Eric Marketts

So the paper took a vendor's phrase and gave it a test.

Steph Nell

And then the paper says something interesting about its own phrase. It says "Order as Master Record" may be a more accurate description than "Native Order." And it says the industry is converging on a broader definition.

Eric Marketts

Which means even IATA isn't sure native Order is the right name.

Steph Nell

It means the vocabulary is still moving. That's worth knowing before anyone puts it in a contract.

Eric Marketts

So let's run the test on the names we have. Finnair.

Steph Nell

Finnair's first native Order was on its own website. Our guess is that puts Finnair on the first rung in that channel. That's a guess. And when we checked in August, Finnair's new sales tool still settled through the B-S-P, and interline wasn't available on it. In what we found, Finnair has not published how many of its sales are Orders.

Eric Marketts

Saudia.

Steph Nell

Saudia uses what Amadeus calls smart bridging. Records in its existing reservation system are translated into Orders. So the reservation comes first. By IATA's wording, that's not a Native Order. Some headlines say Saudia completed a move off its old system. The release text we could find doesn't say that. We're going with the release.

Eric Marketts

And we should say we saw that release only in trade reprints, not the original.

Steph Nell

Good catch. Yes. Now Riyadh Air.

Eric Marketts

Riyadh Air's technology partner Flyer says Riyadh Air launched as the first full-service airline built only on Offer and Order. That's a vendor claim. It's the cleanest candidate for the first rung. It's not evidence that anyone can switch off an old reservation system. And we don't know how it handles interline or settlement.

Steph Nell

We're also not going to give you a launch date, because the sources disagree by weeks.

Eric Marketts

So that's three names. How does that fit with IATA's seven?

Steph Nell

This is where it gets interesting. IATA's release last week gave the number seven and no names. It also doesn't mention the white paper, and it doesn't define live. But the white paper itself has an acknowledgements page with eight airline logos. Air France-KLM, British Airways, Finnair, Lufthansa Group, Pegasus, Riyadh Air, Saudia and Turkish Airlines.

Eric Marketts

Those are the seven, plus one.

Steph Nell

Don't do that.

Eric Marketts

I'm just pointing at it.

Steph Nell

Those are contributors to a paper. The paper doesn't say any of them are live. They're not the seven. Treat the list as the airlines at the table, not the airlines past the finish line.

Eric Marketts

Fair. I'm withdrawing the arithmetic.

Steph Nell

One more number. IATA's separate readiness update this October says about ten airline contracts with technology providers, up from seven. And last year's deck also said seven. IATA doesn't reconcile the seven in its release with the ten in its update. Our read, and it's an inference, is that seven may be a figure that got carried forward.

Eric Marketts

And that readiness update is what, exactly?

Steph Nell

It’s IATA’s readiness survey of technology providers, the companies that build airline systems. Nineteen answered, and the numbers are self-reported. Trial projects with airlines, meaning proofs of concept and pilots, are at seventy-two, up from forty-eight in last year’s survey. Pilots running in real production are at twenty-six, up from twenty. And the update says some are already live on bundling and on Orders as the master record for selling. It doesn’t say who “some” is.

Eric Marketts

Self-reported, unnamed. Same warning label as always.

Steph Nell

Same warning label. One more detail from that update, because it's a good example of why definitions matter. It talks about starting to decommission legacy systems, and it defines that as stopping synchronization with the old system for at least a thousand travelers.

Eric Marketts

A thousand travelers. That's not very many.

Steph Nell

It's a definition, not a goal. But it shows how small the first finish line is. And on the chart, as best we can tell, to the nearest half year, the front runners show Order as master record for selling as already live. For settlement, 2027 for the front runners and 2029 for the majority. For interline without any legacy at all, 2027 for the front runners, and 2029 to 2030 for the majority.

Eric Marketts

So the same industry has airlines already live and airlines still waiting until 2030.

Steph Nell

Which is exactly why one count of seven can't carry the message.

Eric Marketts

Okay. Bull case, properly. The industry finally has a yardstick with rungs. You can ask a real question now. "Live" at which rung, in which channel. That's progress. Last year the question was "is anyone live," and the answer was a shrug.

Steph Nell

And the bear case. A disclaimed white paper. The paper doesn't require any airline to report against it. And "master record for sales" isn't defined any further than that phrase. Two analysts could look at the same airline and disagree.

Eric Marketts

Critical take.

Steph Nell

The scoreboard IATA needs isn't a count. It's a table. Airline, channel, highest rung. IATA has now written the column headers. Settlement, the part that finally retires the ticket, is third on the paper's list. Until somebody fills in that table, "live" is a word, not a measurement.

Eric Marketts

So if you buy air travel, or sell it, what's the homework?

Steph Nell

Ask your airline one question. When you say live, which rung, and in which channel? And if they say sales, ask when servicing and settlement follow. That's the date that changes your costs and your workload.

Eric Marketts

Okay. The harder story. Steph, start with the thing people get wrong.

Steph Nell

This is not a G-D-S breach. A G-D-S is one of the big shared systems travel agents use to find and sell flights. This week's story is about the airlines' own passenger service systems, the hosted reservation records. Amadeus wears both hats. It runs a G-D-S, and it provides reservation systems to airlines. The airlines affected say they're talking about the second hat.

Eric Marketts

So not travel agency data. Airline data, kept by a vendor.

Steph Nell

Kept by a vendor. Here's what's on the record. Japan Airlines says Amadeus told it on October 23 that there were traces of outside access from August 10, 2023 to September 23, 2026. JAL names Amadeus as the provider of its passenger service system, the one that handles reservations, ticketing and check-in.

Eric Marketts

And the numbers.

Steph Nell

JAL and Japan Transocean Air, a J-A-L group airline, together say about ninety-two thousand customers. About ninety thousand had a booking reference, name, flight date, route and class of service. About two thousand also had email, phone, passport number, nationality and frequent flyer number. JAL says no card numbers or passwords.

Eric Marketts

Cathay Pacific.

Steph Nell

Cathay says about fifty-three thousand bookings. Bookings, not people. One booking can carry several passengers. Cathay says access ran between August 2023 and September 2026, that Amadeus told it on October 28, and that Amadeus reset a password and added monitoring. Cathay says it has no evidence that financial or payment data was accessed.

Eric Marketts

And A-N-A.

Steph Nell

Reports say about thirty-seven thousand eight hundred customers, split into about thirty-six thousand with basic booking fields and about seventeen hundred with more. That's from news coverage. We haven't seen A-N-A's own notice, so treat the split as reported.

Eric Marketts

Can we add the three up? It's a big number, people will want a total.

Steph Nell

No. Bookings and customers are different units. Adding them makes a number that sounds precise and isn't. And Amadeus has published no airline count at all.

Eric Marketts

Others?

Steph Nell

Korean Air and Asiana say booking reference numbers were involved, and reports say Amadeus told them on October 20. Malaysia Airlines says customer information may have been affected. Qantas says it's potentially impacted. It told Australia's cyber agencies, and it says its own systems are secure. So that's possible exposure for Malaysia and Qantas. Not confirmed.

Eric Marketts

Now, how did it happen?

Steph Nell

Two accounts, and we're going to report both and not stitch them together. Cathay's notice, citing Amadeus, says an unauthorized party used login credentials assigned to an Amadeus system account. Amadeus's own statement, which is dated only "October 2026," says it became aware of a vulnerability affecting a booking display environment. It says booking display data was accessible, that it found no evidence that payment or financial data was accessed, and no sign of ransomware. It says the vulnerability is fixed and monitoring is stronger.

Eric Marketts

Credentials and a vulnerability. Those could be the same incident.

Steph Nell

They could be. They could also describe two parts of one story. Amadeus hasn't said, and its statement doesn't mention credentials. It also doesn't name an airline, a system, dates or a count. So we're not reconciling them for you.

Eric Marketts

Hang on. You said "system." Which system?

Steph Nell

Fair question. Amadeus hasn't said. One trade site named a specific Amadeus reservation product, but Amadeus hasn't confirmed it and neither have the airlines. So we're leaving the name out.

Eric Marketts

Good. So what can we say?

Steph Nell

That J-A-L and A-N-A describe Amadeus as their passenger service system provider. Cathay's notice says only "service provider."

Eric Marketts

And while we're at it. Three years. People are saying three years undetected.

Steph Nell

I was about to say that.

Eric Marketts

I know. That's why I'm stopping you. The dates describe when the access traces run. They don't tell us when Amadeus found it. Business Traveller reports the airlines haven't said. "Undetected for three years" is a claim about discovery, and we haven't seen anyone give the discovery date.

Steph Nell

Point taken. Access traces over about three years. When it was found, unknown. And who did it, unknown. We keep those separate.

Eric Marketts

So what do we actually know, and what don't we?

Steph Nell

The airlines have confirmed access traces over about three years, to booking data, with passenger details for a smaller group. Amadeus has confirmed a vulnerability affecting a booking display environment, now fixed. Nobody we've found has confirmed which system, how many airlines, who did it, or when Amadeus found it.

Eric Marketts

That's a short list for a three-year window.

Steph Nell

It's a list we can stand behind. Everything else is inference, and we're leaving it out.

Eric Marketts

Bull case. The disclosures came fast and with real detail. JAL and Cathay each published within days of hearing from Amadeus. JAL gave counts and the exact fields exposed. Cathay said what Amadeus did next. And both say no card numbers or payment data.

Steph Nell

Bear case. The vendor's own statement has no airline, no system, no dates and no count. The two accounts of how it happened differ. And the window is about three years. The details are coming from the airlines, not from the company that holds the data.

Eric Marketts

Critical take.

Steph Nell

When a breach like this lands, three things matter. What was exposed, who was affected, and how it happened. The airlines gave us the first two. On the third, we have two accounts that don't match and a vendor statement with no numbers. That's our view. Until Amadeus says more, treat the airline notices as the record.

Eric Marketts

And if you're a traveler, a corporate travel manager, or an agency?

Steph Nell

Check the notices from the airlines you fly or book. A booking record carries names and flight details, and for some travelers in these notices, passport numbers. Ask your airlines what they were told and when. And watch whether Amadeus names the system, publishes a count, or hears from a regulator. We found no regulator action as of this recording.

Eric Marketts

Last topic. The same IATA paper has a section titled, and I'm not making this up, "A hybrid P-S-S transition is the new normal."

Steph Nell

Which is IATA being honest. It's saying the industry isn't going to flip a switch. Airlines will run old and new side by side for years. And it says the bridges between them should remain communication layers only.

Eric Marketts

Meaning?

Steph Nell

Meaning the bridge should pass messages. It shouldn't become a new place where the business logic lives. A bridge that quietly becomes a second brain is how you end up with two masters.

Eric Marketts

Okay, so how does hybrid work when a trip involves two airlines?

Steph Nell

First, a definition. Interline is when one itinerary uses more than one airline, on one ticket. Say, you fly one airline from Detroit to Frankfurt and a partner onward to Delhi.

Eric Marketts

And that's where it gets complicated.

Steph Nell

Think of a relay race where every runner has to use the same baton. If one runner is still carrying paper, the whole leg is paper.

Eric Marketts

That's basically the rule?

Steph Nell

Close. The paper calls it "no hybrid booking." For any origin and destination and date, the whole itinerary is handled one of two ways. Either wholly in the old reservation system, or wholly as an Order. It doesn't split.

Eric Marketts

So no half-and-half.

Steph Nell

No half-and-half. And two other principles matter. Principle four says the customer's contract has to stay representable in the old ticket-based terms, including the A-T-P-CO fare rules, A-T-P-CO being the company that publishes airline fares, until the whole itinerary is managed as an Order. And principle five says airlines must handle both kinds of settlement in parallel.

Eric Marketts

Settlement, again. Explain the parallel part.

Steph Nell

Today, when two airlines share a trip, the revenue gets split between them through a process called proration, in short, dividing the fare among the airlines by agreed formulas. The paper says airlines should keep doing that, and also be able to settle through Orders, at the same time.

Eric Marketts

So two back offices.

Steph Nell

Two back offices, for years. And that's where last week's point, that finance has to be built in from the start, meets reality. It's easy to say. It's harder when the partner across the table is still doing it the old way.

Eric Marketts

Does the paper give a timeline?

Steph Nell

It gives a roadmap in stages. Stand-alone extras first. Then what it calls the right to fly, which it labels the critical inflection point. Then bundles. Then new commercial models. And a heading in the readiness update says it plainly. The start of legacy decommissioning shifts by one to two years.

Eric Marketts

So the dates moved. Again.

Steph Nell

In that update, the fastest quarter of providers say they're on track for 2027. The other three quarters report delays of a year or two. Self-reported, again.

Eric Marketts

What's the practical read?

Steph Nell

Here's our inference, and we're labeling it one. Under principle two, an interline itinerary runs all one way or all the other. So until the airlines on a trip can all take Orders, interline itineraries stay on the old records. That's for interline. A journey on one airline's own flights isn't capped by this rule. So please don't hear this as "an airline's Order share is capped." That isn't what we're saying.

Eric Marketts

Good. Bull case. IATA is being honest. It names coexistence as the norm instead of promising a cutover date. That's better than the vision decks.

Steph Nell

Bear case. The dates moved again. And for interline itineraries, the rule makes the slowest partner the pace car.

Eric Marketts

Critical take.

Steph Nell

Dual settlement means the industry agreed to run two back offices for years. Anyone selling a business case for Offers and Orders should include the cost of the second back office. It's not in most of the pitches.

Eric Marketts

Bottom line. IATA wrote the test, and nobody publishes the scores. "Lyve" is a ladder, not a switch.

Steph Nell

Amadeus told airlines about outside access to reservation data over about three years. The airlines have given counts. Amadeus hasn't said which system, how many airlines, or when it found it.

Eric Marketts

And hybrid is the plan, which means for trips that cross airlines, the slowest partner sets the pace.

Steph Nell

Four things to watch. Which rung, in which channel, for each airline calling itself live. The names behind IATA's seven. Whether Amadeus names the system, publishes a count, or draws regulator action. And whether the decommissioning dates move again.

Eric Marketts

And still open from earlier weeks. The first airline to publish a price for an A-I agent's search.

Steph Nell

When somebody announces progress, ask which record is the original, and which rung they're on.

Eric Marketts

We have no corrections this week.

Steph Nell

Though I tightened my own definition of live at the top. Consider it a software update.

Eric Marketts

Before we go, a favor. If this episode taught you something, please like, follow and share the show on your preferred podcast platform. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music or Audible. Wherever you listen.

Steph Nell

It helps the show far more than you'd think. Every follow and every share puts us in front of someone new.

Eric Marketts

And here's an easy one. Do you know anyone in travel distribution? An airline colleague, a T-M-C, a G-D-S or technology partner. Send them this episode. That's how the right people find us.

Steph Nell

Sources for every story are in the show notes. If you have questions or comments, or you think we got something wrong, email us at Info at V-1 Advisory dot C-O. And if you know who IATA's seven are, we especially want to hear from you.

Eric Marketts

The V1 Airline Retailing Report publishes every Monday. I'm Eric Marketts.

Steph Nell

And I'm Steph Nell. Know where the original livs.