Experts
Oana Savu
Ink Innovation
Victor Alzate
Ink Innovation
Organised by
IATA
Ink Innovation
Modern airline retailing does not end when an offer becomes an order. It becomes real when the service is delivered.
In this IATA Offers and Orders Strategic Partners Series webinar, Oana Savu, Chief Growth Officer, and Victor Alzate, Chief Product Officer at Ink Innovation, discuss one of the most practical questions in the transition to Offers and Orders: how airlines move from traditional Departure Control Systems, or DCS, towards broader Delivery Management Systems, or DMS.
The session looks at what changes when airline delivery is no longer built only around flights, passengers, and departure windows, but around services, orders, and the full passenger journey.
Key takeaways
01
DCS was built for departure. DMS is built for service delivery.
DCS remains central to today’s airline operations. It supports check-in, boarding, passenger acceptance, and flight readiness.
But modern airline retailing needs more than departure control. Once an offer becomes an order, the airline needs to know what was promised, what service must be delivered, where it should happen, and how to update the order when something changes.
That is where Delivery Management becomes critical.
02
The Order needs operational context
In an Offers and Orders environment, the Order Management System knows what was booked and promised.
The Delivery Management System knows what is happening in the real journey.
A modern DMS connects these two views so that services, entitlements, and delivery statuses are visible across the journey. This helps airlines understand whether a service has been delivered, changed, disrupted, or could not be fulfilled.
03
Delivery is no longer limited to the airport window
Traditional airline operations often work around fixed control windows and departure processes.
In an Orders world, delivery can happen much earlier, later, and across more touchpoints. It may involve online check-in, airport desks, gates, lounges, onboard services, disruption handling, or post-arrival actions.
The key point: delivery must follow the passenger journey, not only the flight departure.
04
Airlines need to support both legacy and order-based operations
The transition from DCS to DMS will not happen in one switch.
Airlines still need to support legacy processes, airport requirements, government messages, interline scenarios, and partners that are not yet operating in an Orders environment.
Ink’s approach is to support both worlds: legacy DCS processes and modern Order Management flows. This allows airlines to move step by step without putting today’s operation at risk.