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I’ve been thinking about this for some time, which, admittedly, can be dangerous, but here goes.
The airline industry is overflowing with what I call Legacy Adaptive Innovation. It’s what happens when we keep layering “new” technology on top of old foundations. Most airlines still depend on Passenger Service Systems (PSSs) owned and operated by third parties. That model made sense when airlines were selling simple fares and schedules. Community upgrades every few years did the job.
Fast-forward to today. Airlines are promising dynamic bundles, personalized offers, continuous pricing, and real-time engagement. These ambitions demand flexibility and control, two things legacy systems were never built to deliver.
That’s where One Order (OOSD – Offer, Order, Settle, Deliver) comes in. The idea is compelling: replace a patchwork of legacy processes with a single, modern retailing flow. Done right, it can finally unlock the customer experience and revenue potential airlines have been chasing for decades.
Why Legacy Adaptive Innovation Falls Short
Back in 2011, I joked that the GDS and PSS world seemed to have a built-in allergy to innovation. While motivations have evolved, the constraints haven’t. Delivering next-generation retailing on top of legacy architecture is, quite simply, hard.
Here’s why:
- System design: The original PSS blueprints never imagined dynamic offers, shopping carts, or non-ATPCO pricing. The building blocks just aren’t there.
- Investment gravity: These systems represent hundreds of millions in sunk cost. You can’t simply scrap and start again, so providers keep adapting.
- The incremental trap: That adaptation keeps things moving but often dilutes innovation. The new tech spends so much effort working with the old tech that it can’t deliver its full potential.
It’s like trying to install a high-speed engine in a 1970s car. It’ll run, but not how it’s meant to.
Breaking the Chains
A few weeks ago, Accelya published “Breaking the Chains: Future-Proofing Airline Retailing with Open Standards.” It drew on an article from Kemp IT Law, which highlighted how restrictive legacy contracts can quietly slow innovation. The biggest blockers aren’t always technical. They’re often contractual.
Legacy Adaptive Innovation keeps those chains intact, only polished a little. True transformation starts when airlines insist on freedom of choice, open APIs, data portability, and the ability to integrate or replace technology on their own terms.
That’s what One Order, done right, makes possible: a clean-slate architecture built on openness, modularity, and cloud-native design.
From Breaking the Chains to Choosing the Right Partners
Of course, recognizing the need for openness is only half the battle. The harder part is choosing partners who actually deliver it.
That was the focus of my “3-Question RFP” keynote at T2RL Engage London this year. I argued that too many RFPs still reward the safest answers instead of the boldest outcomes, reinforcing legacy rather than escaping it.
To break that pattern, airlines should ask just three questions:
- Value: Will this deliver measurable revenue and margin uplift, and how fast?
- Innovation capacity: Will it let us evolve continuously without heavy cost or disruption?
- Legacy clarity: Does it reduce or reinforce dependency on old cores?
Those three questions turn the philosophy of Breaking the Chains into a practical test. They separate clean-slate innovation from another round of incremental adaptation.
Looking Ahead
When new meets old, ROI takes a hit. I’ve seen brilliant teams burn countless hours making modern systems compatible with legacy environments. The outcome? Compromise. Workarounds. Frustration. Progress, yes, but slower and smaller than it should be.
If we accept that a full shift to modern retailing platforms is inevitable, the industry really has three paths:
- Established players evolve. The GDS and PSS providers take the plunge and build clean-slate systems. The challenge is less about money and more about mindset.
- New entrants collaborate. A new generation of tech companies, free from legacy constraints but steeped in airline know-how, create a new foundation.
- The middle ground: partnership and pragmatism. Legacy players and innovators work together in open frameworks that keep control in the airline’s hands.
My bet? Clean-slate innovation will win. Not overnight, but inevitably.
The journey to One Order – OOSD done right isn’t about ripping out legacy tomorrow. It’s about knowing when incremental change stops paying off and when bold reinvention becomes essential.
This is a new era for airline retailing, one that will be powered by cloud-native, open, and modular technology built for the next several decades.
So, what’s your bet?
