Airline groups today face a complex balancing act. Each brand wants to express its individuality, innovate at its own pace, and respond to its market. Yet the group as a whole require efficiency, alignment, and consistency where it matters most. As carriers across the industry embark on the journey toward Modern Airline Retailing (MAR), this tension between commonality and autonomy is emerging as one of the defining strategic questions for major airline carriers.
Modern retailing isn’t just a technology transition. It’s a complete rethinking of how airlines sell, serve, and collaborate within their own networks and across partners. Moving from legacy PNR-based processes to Offer and Order Management promises more personalised, seamless experiences and more efficient operations. But for airline groups, it also opens the door to shared value creation: cross-brand retailing, unified servicing, and better data-driven decisions.
Designing for modularity, not uniformity
The opportunity, however, is matched by the challenge. Group airlines often operate on different systems, at varying levels of digital maturity, and with distinct business models. A “one-size-fits-all” platform can deliver scale but risks constraining flexibility and innovation. Conversely, a fully decentralised approach leads to fragmentation, duplication, and lost synergies. The winning path lies somewhere in between, one that is focused on designing for modularity, not uniformity.
Frameworks for alignment
Achieving this balance requires more than just architectural design. Airline groups must apply structured evaluation frameworks to determine where alignment creates tangible value, such as in Order Management, Delivery, or Customer Data.
Equally, they must determine where differentiation should be preserved as a competitive strength, for example, in Offer creation or merchandising. These assessments must go beyond IT architecture and look at how group-level governance, shared vendor agreements, and the delivery maturity of each airline can accelerate or slow transformation.
The human element: governance and culture
Technology alone does not make this transformation successful. True transformation depends on governance, culture, and collaboration. Airline groups must establish cross-airline task forces, shared reference architectures, and joint innovation pilots to test interoperability in real conditions.
Modernisation at this scale requires not only new systems but also an agile, data-driven way of working, one where decisions are guided by shared, high-quality data and where continuous experimentation through controlled tests becomes a core part of how teams across business and technology learn and improve.
Accelerating the journey
Modern Airline Retailing at the group level is, therefore, as much about mindset as machinery. The airlines that succeed will be those that harmonise their digital foundations while empowering each brand to compete and innovate at the edge.
Branchspace partners with airlines and groups worldwide, including British Airways and Air France-KLM to accelerate this journey. Our expertise spans strategy, architecture, and delivery. We are helping carriers identify where commonality creates value, where differentiation drives advantage, and how to orchestrate both through modern, modular ecosystems.
