Flights Unified Checkout Guide

The Flights API provides two ways to book: 

  • Use a workbench session and multiple requests to create a held air reservation for later fulfillment, called a booking. Refer to the Booking Guide for more information.

  • Send all relevant booking information in a single, Unified Checkout request, described below.

As an alternative to the multi-request booking workflow that takes place in a workbench session, you can send all booking details and commit one unified checkout payload to create a booking. The unified checkout book request does not support some of the optional steps in the booking workflow, such as adding seats or ancillaries. Available for both NDC and GDS.

Seats and ancillaries not yet supported.

The TripServices APIs Unified Checkout workflow consolidates multiple API booking calls into a single request, improving efficiency. The response improves error handling by returning both successful and failed outcomes in the same payload.

This guide summarizes the differences between the multi-step booking flow and Unified Checkout, as well as which features are supported. Refer to Unified Checkout API Reference for detailed information about the request and response.

In this topic:

 

Unified Checkout process

  1. Shop for offers.

  2. It is recommended that you Price the offer. It is required for some NDC carriers and recommended for GDS carriers.

  3. Send reservation/reservations/build to create workbench, add traveler, add comments, add service request, add form of payment, add payment (for instant ticket), and commit workbench. There are three options for Unified Checkout: 

    • Send full payload request with all information, including flights and price. Applies to GDS offers only.

      Note: Unpriced segment is a full payload request that sends all flight details, does not include any pricing information, and does not require a preceding Search or AirPrice request. Applies to GDS only. Refer to Unpriced segments below for more information.

    • Send reference payload request after Shop and Price transactions. Reference payload request uses identifiers from the previous Search response instead of full itinerary details. Applies to both NDC and GDS offers.

Unified Checkout supports both instant book and book and hold.

  • For instant book, payment information must be included in the request.

  • For book and hold, do not sent payment information in the request.

    For a held booking, the booking is confirmed by the airline but not yet ticketed. The booking must still be ticketed in a workbench session, and will expire if ticketing doesn't take place within a certain time, usually within 24 hours of booking. Expiration and ticketing time limits are returned in the commit response in TermsAndConditionsFull/ExpiryDate and PaymentTimeLimit.

Unified Checkout support

The table below indicates which features are supported by both GDS and NDC or by GDS only for Unified Checkout.

Capability

GDS/Traditional

NDC

Add Traveler

Y

Y

Add Offer

Y

Y

Primary Contact

Y

Y

Special Service Request (SSR)

Y

N

General Remarks

Y

Y

Accounting Remarks

Y

Y

Corporate ID

Y

Y

Retention Line

Y

Y

Travel Agency Details

Y

Y

MCT check

Y

N

Retain Reservation

Y

N

Queue Placement

Y

Y

Document Override

Y

N

Form of Payment

Y

Y

Payment

Y

Y

Ticket Issuance

Y

Y

Loyalty Card

Y

Y

Unpriced Segments (Passive AK, BK, YK)

Y

N

Difference between Unified Checkout and non-Unified Checkout

Once a search is complete and an offer identified:

Unified Checkout

Non-Unified Checkout

Send Unified Checkout request

1. Create workbench

2. Add offer

3. Add traveler

4. Add Form of Payment (for instant ticket)

5. Add Payment (for instant ticket)

6. Commit workbench

Unpriced segments

GDS only; NDC does not use unpriced segments.

An unpriced segment is an air segment without any associated fare or pricing. It is generally booked for availability versus cost. Unpriced content is returned in the UnpricedSegments object instead of the Offer object, which by definition includes fare and pricing details.

An unpriced segment can be booked using Unified Checkout. Unpriced Segment is a full payload request that sends all flight details, does not include any pricing information, and does not require a preceding Search or AirPrice request. Supported for segment statuses BK, AK, YK. Adding seats and/or ancillaries is not currently supported for unpriced segments.

To add both an unpriced segment and an offer to the booking, you can send both Unpriced Segment and Add Offer in the same workbench session.

Unpriced content can include GDS air segments. Any Arrival Unknown (ARNK) segment is returned as an unpriced segment.

The TripServices APIs support two options for pricing unpriced segments. Both use the AutoPrice/Manual Fare API, which provides separate payloads to price in either of the following ways: 

Each scenario uses its own request payload. Both payloads support pricing one or multiple segments for one or multiple passengers on a booking and are supported in the booking workflows as follows:

  • Auto pricing an unpriced segment is supported in either the booking or post-booking workflow.

  • Manual fare build for an unpriced segment is supported only in the post-booking workflow (held booking only). If you add an unpriced segment to the workbench, you must commit that workbench and create a new post-commit workbench before using the Manual Fare request.

The following objects are returned for unpriced segment/s in the response:

  • Reservation returns UnpricedSegments with details of the unpriced segment.

  • TravelerProduct returns UnpricedFlightSegmentRefs to list unpriced segment/s for that traveler.

  • Receipt/Confirmation returns UnpricedSegmentsStatus with the status of the air segment.

  • ReservationDisplaySequence returns UnpricedSegmentDisplaySequence to indicate the sequence of the unpriced segment.

The following functionality is supported for unpriced segments; see the linked TripServices APIs for each item:

Exchanges with unpriced segments are not supported.