By Daniel Friedli, Travel in Motion AG
When the Modern Airline Retailing (MAR) programme kicked off in earnest around 2022, it did so with a mix of scepticism, excitement and ambition. Airlines had spent a decade talking about transformation while wrestling with legacy plumbing that persists. The buzz and hype have turned into activity, and progress since then has been unmistakable. Volumes of NDC transactions grew, more carriers began experimenting with Orders and vendors retooled roadmaps. With the creation of the Airline Retailing Consortium and the countless hours airlines, vendors, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and consultancies put into it, the foundations were laid.
As 2026 comes into view, one should not expect a revolution but rather an evolution of deliberate, confident steps. The industry is moving from “proving the concept” to “making it normal”. Below are the areas where that should be most visible.
Airlines: Pragmatism with visible results
Airlines in 2026 are not chasing transformation for the sake of transformation. They are chasing bottom-line improvements, operational predictability and competitive differentiation.
Expect more airlines to announce concrete MAR milestones: full Order pilots in selected channels, retirement of niche legacy flows or live continuous pricing in indirect markets through NDC. Carriers with strong digital DNA and a clear executive-set focus will move faster, but even traditionally conservative players will take meaningful steps driven partly by vendor capability finally catching up, fear of missing out and seeing their partners and competitors making the move. Other factors which will drive decision timelines are expiring passenger service system (PSS) contracts, opportunities to break free from vendor lock-ins and new commercial opportunities.
We will also see airlines get bolder with product differentiation. Rich media, personalised bundles, post-purchase upsell flows and dynamically-created ancillaries will expand as the offer and order management and related systems increase in maturity and reliability. What was previously “demo-ware” will turn into everyday retailing.
Finally, airlines are realising they must treat MAR as an enterprise project with corporate-driven roadmaps, not merely a distribution or technology initiative. We can expect organisational rewiring: commercial, digital, operations and finance working against a coordinated roadmap.
Industry: From advocacy to alignment
The broader ecosystem enters 2026 with more clarity on its role.
Travel in Motion (TiM) believes that IATA’s job should increasingly shift from evangelising to enabling. Standards stabilisation (and please, acceleration), governance frameworks, removing regulatory hurdles and settlement evolution should be core focus areas. We expect progress on interline Order capabilities and clarity on product definition and data alignment.
We expect the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) and the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) to keep nudging the industry towards practical adoption. ARC will optimally expand Order-based settlement pilots, while ATPCO refines the bridge between fare filing and dynamic offer construction, providing structure without stifling innovation.
Meanwhile, airports, travel management companies (TMCs) and global distribution systems (GDSs) must be involved more by the airlines, IATA and the consortium to deepen their integration efforts. Without the buy-in of these key ecosystem players, even the best intended transformation plans will not be executed. Airports must focus on making Order data usable for operational planning with the support of the airport software vendors which usually provide a legacy departure control system (DCS). Furthermore, together with airlines, regulators and tech companies, the use of data and biometrics should be expanded to move towards streamlined airport operations which allow customers to have more dwell time for shopping, dining, working or socialising. The innovative TMCs we should see building richer servicing and duty-of-care flows on top of Orders rather than fighting them. GDSs, already repositioning as multi-source aggregators, will continue modernising back-office processes to handle Orders natively.
Technology: The quiet enabler
Technology’s role in MAR in 2026 will not invent new buzzwords but rather focus on three practical themes: simplification, decoupling and automation.
The decoupling of Offers and Orders will continue to mature. In 2026, expect more airlines and vendors to treat the order management system (OMS) as the new “gravitational centre” of retailing. While not fully independent from the PSS, we should see capability of orchestrating fulfilment, servicing and settlement events across partners. The shift will not be large-scale globally just yet, but pilots will start turning into production-grade rollouts.
Even more exciting is when application programming interface (API) performance and reliability finally become boring. This is good. Airlines that struggled to stabilise NDC APIs in earlier years are now working with vendors to mature and further standardise additional APIs. Vendors are starting to expose more granular services and deploying event-driven architectures which enable better accessibility as well as more automation built by airlines.
We can already see that artificial intelligence (AI) will stop being a sideshow. TiM expects genuine use cases to help airlines tackle tedious daily tasks, helpers to drive additional revenue or intelligence to orchestrate smart customer experience flows. Other examples we may see, aside from flashy prototypes, are automated quality checks on offer construction, anomaly detection in servicing flows or proactive failure alerts for interline Orders. AI will become a mainstay and serve as a tool in the toolbox of offer creation, order management and customer experience.
We believe technology in 2026 is not about breakthroughs; it is about making the plumbing trustworthy enough that commercial teams can implement new features and capabilities with confidence.
Vendors: Convergence and clarity
The vendor landscape has spent the last few years in a curious state of both innovation and identity crisis. In 2026, this stabilises and vendors will have defined more clearly in which space they play across the digital retailing ecosystem.
We expect clearer segmentation. The large PSS providers will double down on refining their hybrid models, supporting legacy EDIFACT and legacy system compatibility while offering progressively stronger and, we hope, modular solutions. Mid-tier tech firms that have been in the airline space for a while, and those that more recently entered with enthusiasm will either consolidate or specialise: offer optimisation, segmentation, merchandising via product catalogue and stock keeper, order orchestration microservices, integrations for interline and codeshare and so on. From TiM’s perspective, we hope to see a few examples of true modularity, and one or two bold purchasing decisions where some of the underdogs get a true chance to shine.
Crucially, vendors will be far more transparent about timelines and capabilities, and they will have to be – now it is about commitment and not selling a dream. After years of marketing roadmaps that overshot reality, 2026 brings a more grounded tone. Airlines will push for and get firmer delivery commitments, better transition planning and more standardised interfaces that reduce custom build cycles.
Another shift, and perhaps an overshoot of optimism on our part: integration costs go down, not because the work is easier, but because more vendors align on IATA schemas, adopt shared tooling, utilise AI helpers and participate in joint reference implementations. Interoperability becomes less aspirational and more contractual.
In 2026, Modern Airline Retailing will not “arrive”, but it will become more of a reality for many airlines. Incremental value will be generated by early adopters of initial modules; the legacy systems will have to loosen their grip. The ecosystem, while still in a hybrid mode this year and for several years to come, starts benefiting from the removal of legacy concepts and the use of modern architecture and technology. Progress will be uneven but unmistakably forward.
If the past four years were about proving the value of MAR, 2026 is the year the industry starts extracting that value. Perhaps not yet at scale, but steady drops also fill a bucket.
Join us at Aviation Festival Asia 2026 to discuss the future of modern airline retailing.
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