Oct 14, 2025 / By Vanessa Horwell
13 min read
Our new interview series examines the structural challenges facing aviation and the companies and individuals working to address them. From distribution deadlocks and budget overruns to stalled innovation, hear stories from the frontline as they confront legacy systems, commercial inertia and the industry’s chronic reluctance to change.
Meet Boris Padovan
On paper, airline retailing seems simple enough: customers select what they want (fare, seat, bags), book it, pay for it and get those services delivered. But with so many parties involved, including airports, where much of the delivery occurs, the reality is both messier and non-linear. Siloed systems fragment the travel experience, keeping true customer-first service largely out of reach.
With nearly 25 years in airline IT—from Swissair’s Atraxis to senior roles at EDS/HP, SITA, and Travelport—Boris Padovan has seen these disparate processes permeate the entire airline retail chain and knows why overcoming them is so challenging. Now the Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer at the Switzerland-based consultancy Travel in Motion (where he joined as a partner in 2020), he helps airlines and their technology partners transition to Modern Airline Retailing, something the ecosystem has long been waiting for.
I spoke with Boris about where progress has started and when it might become the new norm.
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
WHY CHANGE IS HARD: LEGACY, MONEY, CULTURE
What is blocking modernization in airline retailing? Is the problem technical, commercial or cultural?
It’s all three. On the technical front, many carriers still rely on embedded legacy processes (and the technology that underpins them). For instance, we still send teletype messages to organize a wheelchair at the airport, if you can believe that. Changing this is inherently difficult because the industry is so interconnected. You cannot change one component and expect everything else across the ecosystem to function normally; you must consider the entire technology stack and all the integrations that have been built up over decades. That makes it incredibly difficult to make even the smallest of changes, let alone innovate.
The commercial environment also hampers innovation. With large costs such as fuel, fees and labor, airlines operate on extraordinarily thin margins, which leaves little room in the budget for what might be perceived as risky bets. And finally, culturally, aviation is risk-averse because it is (rightfully) safety-obsessed, making the ‘move fast and break things’ mindset impossible. The challenge is to drive retail innovation within aviation without compromising the safety-first mindset.
MISALIGNED INTERESTS AND WHY BALANCE MATTERS
You’ve worked closely with airlines, technology vendors and global distribution systems (GDSs)—groups whose priorities don’t always line up. Where is the biggest misalignment, and how is it shaping retailing?
The market has layers. Everyone wants to provide services and make money, but margins are not equal. Some large distribution providers and IT vendors report healthy returns, while airlines struggle.
The internet has helped balance the scales. Airlines can now connect directly with travel sellers and customers and build their own personalized offers, bypassing GDSs in some instances. This has improved cost efficiency, which can boost revenue. While this puts more onus on the airline because they now have to create the offer, recognize the buyer and service the trip, it’s also bringing more balance to the industry—and that’s a good thing. The goal should be a model where both airlines and GDSs retain enough value that they can invest in new technology and drive innovation forward.
AIRLINE + AIRPORT = ONE TRUTH
Passengers don’t always see the layers behind airline retailing, especially between the airline and the airport. Has airline–airport integration improved in ways people can feel?
Yes and no—there have been some improvements, but there is still a long way to go. Currently, there is no single source of truth or a single record for the entire trip. Take a delay: The airline operations system may change the departure time; the airport display updates later, and the gate agent might have a third time on their screen. That’s how you end up with an app saying one thing, the gate screen another and a text message with a third version. Passengers can accept a delay; they cannot accept three different messages.
With one record for the trip, based on the order that airline, airport, ground handler, security and lounge systems can read and update, a change to the flight time would update all channels simultaneously. The same applies to seats, bags and rebooking during disruptions: what was sold or changed earlier should be visible at the airport so that staff can deliver it. Most services occur at the airport, from check-in to bag drop, boarding and paid extras. That’s why this alignment across systems matters so much.
SERVICE DELIVERY IN PRACTICE: SMALL FIXES, BIG GAINS
What does better delivery at the airport look like in practice?
Here are two simple examples. If a bag is overweight, a ground agent should be able to sell and collect the fee on the spot, but often can’t because they don’t have access to the passenger record. Instead, the passenger is sent to pay at another desk, which wastes time. Now imagine if that passenger is running late. Will the ground agent risk holding up the flight and the airline’s on-time performance to collect the fee? No. Think of all the lost revenue due to these types of situations.
Second, if you are running late, there is a chance you may miss your flight due to security congestion. There should be a more straightforward way for the airport to offer a fast track on the spot that can be triggered by simply scanning your boarding pass and using the credit card used for the booking to pay. These are process and solvable IT issues that enable teams to act on timely opportunities and streamline the traveler experience.
THE OFFER–ORDER–SETTLE–DELIVER PLAYBOOK
We’ve talked about airport delivery and the need for one record of the trip. Stepping back, you often describe retailing as a four-step process: offer, order, settle and deliver (OOSD). How widely is that model understood across the industry today?
It’s mixed. At Travel in Motion, we have a great market overview. Some of the airlines we are working with are still in the exploratory stage, while others have a complete strategy for transitioning from traditional to modern distribution and retailing. They are aligned organizationally, have a budget, target architecture and vendor choices, and are now moving to execution. And while that’s exciting, at the end of the day, airlines must play to the lowest common denominator.
There is a long-held assumption that key players can stay on legacy systems while others modernize. If important partners continue to use outdated processes, such as insisting on traditional codeshare or interline agreements, everyone must revert to old technology; otherwise, flights will not take off. The target must be clear: move off legacy solutions together, even if each entity progresses at a different pace. Until that happens, we’ll all be operating in hybrid mode.
WHERE ADOPTION IS MOVING FASTEST
Is a 10-year horizon for broad adoption realistic? Which regions are furthest along in the adoption of OOSD?
Europe is the frontrunner, in part because its business model differs from that of the U.S., where a few large carriers dominate the market. Airlines like Air France-KLM and British Airways have publicly moved toward offer- and order-based retailing. Finnair is another example. There’s momentum in parts of Latin America, while Africa is coming slowly but surely.
It's difficult to come up with a precise number on broad adoption, however. It isn’t a simple swap. We’re talking about different companies, in other geographies with vastly different operational, cultural and budgetary realities. In 7 to 10 years, perhaps 50% of airlines will be on offer and order. Let’s speak again in 15 years and see where we are.
AI AND PRICING: BEYOND THE HYPE
Switching gears from OOSD, when I think about modern retailing, I can’t help but think about AI-based pricing. Where do you see AI fitting in?
There is a lot of hype, but it’s essentially just a tool to enhance dynamic pricing, a concept that has been around for some time. AI will, however, help us better evaluate a customer’s willingness to pay. We’ve already touched on this, but the internet has allowed airlines to not only sell directly to the customer but to obtain valuable information about them a lot earlier in the buying cycle. This enables us to build personalized profiles that AI can utilize to develop individualized pricing strategies.
For example, charging a customer who isn’t prone to shopping around €278 instead of €272 because the AI layer determines that they would be willing to pay that extra €6 that another customer might not. On the other end, it might mean offering a lower price to secure a family’s booking. We should view AI as a means to better align value with context.
WHAT ‘CUSTOMER-CENTRIC’ SHOULD MEAN
In some way, what you describe with AI pricing is another way of centering the customer. Customer-centricity is something you say that’s currently lacking in the industry. How would you define that concept, and what must airlines do to become traveler-focused organizations?
It comes back to the siloed nature of the industry. These silos aren’t only on the technical side but are on the operational end as well. Let’s say loyalty management wants to thank a frequent flier by offering a low-priced gate upgrade; revenue management might say, ‘No, you can’t offer an upgrade for that price.’ There’s clearly a lot of built-in conflict between departments, but if every function optimizes solely for its own metric, the customer loses.
A customer-first model does just that by prioritizing the customer experience. That means rewarding loyal customers and ensuring they are happy. It’s a mind shift. Modern Airline Retailing makes it easier by tying all transactions across the entire journey to the passenger record, but it means little without cultural change.
A NOTE TO THE NEXT GENERATION
Anything we didn’t cover?
It’s a great time to join aviation. Air travel used to be one of the most technologically advanced industries, but it lost that distinction due to some of the barriers I’ve mentioned. The industry is changing, however, and can again become one of the most modern IT spaces. If you're looking for a global, challenging career, join us.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Modernization in airline retailing will come from practical gains at the airport, smarter pricing in context and adopting the order as the single source of truth. Airlines cannot cling to legacy systems. They have to push through silos and align on Modern Airline Retailing to improve the passenger journey and protect margin for a more sustainable future.
To connect with Boris Padovan or learn more about his work with Travel In Motion, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit www.travelinmotion.ch.
