Some carriers do not accept a form of payment as part of the booking (AirCreateReservationReq/FormOfPayment), and perform ticketing functions outside of electronic or paper tickets. Ticketless carriers that are not Guaranteed Payment Carriers or Electronic Payment Carriers use the SSR OTHS to accept payment. The Form of Payment in SSR OTHS can be sent either during the Air Booking request or in the Universal Record when modifying an air booking, per the instructions and time limit/fare info returned by the carrier just after booking the PNR.
Request
In the Air Booking request, payment information can be included in the OTHS SSR . It should be in a format that is acceptable to the carrier, and each carrier may have a different format the OTHS SSR.
Note: The Form of Payment can be sent in the OTHS SSR either during the Air Booking or through Universal Record Modify, as per the instructions and time limit/fare information returned by the carrier just after booking the PNR. If the the OTHS SSR is added in Universal Record Modify, either a segment reference or the carrier needs to be specified.
Response
An Air Booking response is returned, which includes an indicator that the carrier is a ticketless carrier.
After the PNR is created on the Host, the carrier validates the payment and confirms the purchase. The carrier responds with one or more OTHS SSRs that include the carrier's record locator and the amount charged.
Alternatively, the carrier may reject the SSR and send back the OTHS with the reason that the purchase request failed. In this case the SSR must be fixed and retried or the carrier will cancel the itinerary.
For ticketless carriers, a warning is returned in the response to indicate that special processing is required. Because the request for guaranteed payment is a "manual" process, travel providers should confirm the PNR data in the queue after the booking is completed. The travel provider should ensure that the supplier has accepted the booking and deal with any errors from the supplier that are communicated after the provider responds to the initial book request.
Any response remarks returned from the supplier are not interpreted by Universal API and are passed along directly in the response.
Note: While most responses from suppliers are returned in a matter of seconds, a supplier has 24 hours to issue a response. If an unconfirmed status (e.g., 'NO' or 'UN') is returned, the travel provider should retrieve the booking at a later time to confirm the vendor's response.
Exceptions
Galileo
- Galileo does not support the OTHS SSR as a user-input SSR. Therefore, in the booking response, the Form of Payment information sent as OTHS SSR is returned as Vendor Remarks under General Remarks in the Universal API response.
Apollo
- Apollo does support the OTHS SSR as a user-input SSR. Therefore, in the booking response, the Form of Payment information sent as OTHS SSR is returned as Vendor Remarks under General Remarks in the Universal API response.
This difference is primarily because OTHS SSR is not supported as an user input SSR in Galileo, whereas its allowed in Apollo.
- In the Apollo Air Book response, the Form of Payment information sent as OTHS SSR comes back as OTHS SSR in the Universal API response.
Worldspan
- Worldspan supports Ticketless carriers.
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