Overview

Inventory transports can be used as primary connections between Departure and Arrival airports in a template, like live flight offers. At the moment, transports can be of type Flight, Bus or Train.

Additionally, there is no match pre-condition regarding the airports of inventory flights and the existence of airport stops at the template level, meaning, an inventory flight can be used in a template that does not include an airport.

How to create Inventory Transports?

Before creating an inventory transport, the following information must be known:

• Start/End date and time
• Departure and Arrival airports
• Segments (if applicable)
• Carrier Code
• Net-sale price
• Type of transport

To generate an inventory transport:

• Go to Cockpit
• Click on Inventory
• Click on Products
• Select Transports

• Click on Create Transport
• Select an adequate currency
• Click Save

Adding a Description

In this section, the Outbound and Inbound (or Return Direction) transports can be created in terms of departure and arrival data. Here it is also possible to add alternative transport for the return transport. To do so:

• Click on the tab Description
• Click on Add new segment

• Add the data asked in the modal
• Select the type of transport (Flight, Train, Bus)

• Click Save

If the transport has more than one segment, click on Add new segment again and repeat the steps mentioned before. The same steps apply to adding an Inbound transport (or Return Direction) and Alternative Returns.

Adding Service Categories

Service Categories can be defined per transport direction (Outbound, Return and Alternatives). For each transport direction, more than one Service Category can be defined. To add a Service Category:

• Click on the tab Service Categories
• Click on Add new price category

• Select the adequate transport Class (Economy, Premium Economy, Business, First)
• Fill in the required information
• To add more than one Service Category to the same transport direction, click again on Add a new price category and fill in the information
• Click Save

Adding Allotments

Inventory flights can have assigned allotments by Direction and Service category. To learn more about allotments, please see this article.

Additional Tabs

Learn more about the use of the Additional Tabs in the following overview. 

Inventory Flights at the Template level

Inventory Flights can be added to a template via Cockpit through Flight Configuration. To learn more about how to add inventory transports to a template, please check this article.

Connecting Flights

Inventory flights can be used as connecting transfers between stops within a pre-existing template or an Individual Trip (at the planner level). These types of flights have only one direction (Outbound) defined. Bellow, the setup of both scenarios (at the template level and at the individual trip level) is shown.

Connecting Flights within Templates

To utilize connecting flights within a pre-existing template:

• Create an Outbound/Inbound flight (as described above).

• Create the Connecting Flight itself, where only the Outbound flight is defined (on the Description tab), as well as the respective Service Category.
  • the Departure and Arrival date must match the template architecture. Additionally, the flight must occur between the time gap of the Outbound/Inbound flights.

After creating all the necessary flights, the Outbound/Inbound ones need to be associated to the template. There is no need to aggregate the Connecting Flight to the template. To do this:

• Go to Cockpit
• Click on Inventory
• Click on Package Builder
• Click on Itinerary Templates
• Search for the intended template that will use inventory flights (if the template already exists)OR
• Click on Create Template to create a new template

Within the template

• Go to the Stops tab
• Add a placeholder of type flight for the Connecting Flight
  • Click on Add connection
  • Click on Click to add a new connection
  • Click on Create Transfer Placeholder
  • Select type flight
  • Define start locations as airports related to the stops 

• • Click on Add transfer placeholder
  • Click Done
  • Click Save
  • Click Back

• Go to the Flight Configuration tab
• Select Fixed as the flight configuration
• Add the Outbound/Inbound flights (described here)
• Click Save

• Go to the Miscellaneous tab
• Regenerate the Availability of Template
• Click Save
• Publish the template

At this point, when the template is instantiated in the available date, all three flights are shown at the Planner level, specifically in the Main trip and Transports tabs.

Connecting Flights within Individual trips

In this scenario, inventory flights can be added to an itinerary via flight search in the Planner. For this, some pre-conditions must apply:

• Outbound/Inbound flights exist in the Inventory
• Connecting flight exists in the Inventory
• Individual trip has a flight placeholder between the stops

To add a placeholder in an Individual trip at the Planner level:

• On Edit Route / Plan Your Trip page, define the transport as a flight OR
• On the Main Trip tab, click on Adjust to change the transfer type to Flight

To associate inventory flights to the itinerary at the Planner level:

• Go to the Transports tab
• Write the Departure airport (same as the one defined in the Outbound flight)
• Click Search so that the Outbound/Inbound and Connecting flights are shown

• Click on Select to add the flights to the itinerary

Booking change handling

Inventory flights added to a template with a Fixed flight configuration can not be replaced or removed at the Planner level (as described in this article).

However, if a booking change is triggered, the user can Replace the previous inventory flights for different existing inventory flights (of the same availability) OR for live offers. Flights can also be removed at this point.

This functionality also applies to Connecting (or Multi-city) flights.