Modern Airline Retailing: The OOSD Implementation Series – Part 3: Emirates & The Gateway Authority

Executive Summary — Emirates and the Direct-first Advantage

While European and American carriers often leverage GDS-centric ecosystems to transition to Modern Airline Retailing, Emirates has pioneered a “Direct-First” philosophy through its Emirates Gateway, launched in 2020 as an NDC-powered trade platform. As of early 2026, the Dubai-based carrier has accelerated its transition toward Offers and Orders–based distribution by integrating specialised technology partners such as TPConnects to support offer orchestration and Order management.

By focusing on a proprietary, API-led distribution model, Emirates is seeking to gain greater control over premium product presentation and post-sale servicing—ensuring that high-margin services, such as its Chauffeur-drive service and A380 onboard lounge access, are presented as part of dynamically constructed offers within an OOSD-aligned Order framework, with direct implications for revenue quality and distribution efficiency.

Modern Airline Retailing: The OOSD Implementation Series

Part 3: Emirates & The Gateway Authority

The transition from legacy systems to a Modern Airline Retailing environment is no longer a visionary roadmap; it is a tactical race. For decades, the aviation industry has been tethered to architectures developed in the 1970s—constrained by the limitations of PNRs, e-tickets, and the EDIFACT standard. Today, the IATA Modern Airline Retailing Consortium is leading a fundamental decoupling. By shifting toward an Offers, Orders, Settlements, and Deliveries (OOSD) framework, leading carriers are working to reposition themselves from transportation providers to digital retailers.

In this series, we go beyond high-level press releases to examine the operational mechanics of implementation. We analyse how consortium members are embedding new retailing capabilities into their core systems, the roles of external technology partners, and the milestones required to support IATA’s Retailing and ONE Order frameworks.

The Emirates Gateway: A Fortress of Distribution

For Emirates, the OOSD transition is centred on Emirates Gateway, the airline’s custom-built NDC platform introduced in 2020. Unlike peers that rely primarily on a single passenger service system (PSS) provider, Emirates has adopted an architectural “sovereignty” approach, retaining internal control over core offer and merchandising logic.

The airline has articulated a phased strategy to expand NDC-enabled and direct-Gateway bookings across indirect channels, supported by differentiated content and selective NDC-only fare availability.

To achieve this, Emirates is leveraging OOSD principles to address the long-standing “servicing gap”—the historical difficulty of changing, reissuing, or refunding NDC bookings. By progressing toward a Single Order Record model, the airline is seeking to consolidate servicing workflows that were previously fragmented across PNR, ticket, and EMD records.

This approach has enabled materially improved self-service capability for complex, multi-leg itineraries when compared with traditional document-based processes.