A traveler would happily pay for lounge access during a delay. Another wants an upgrade at the gate. A family is looking for a combination of seats and services that makes their journey easier.
The demand exists. But can the airline put the right offer in front of that customer at that moment?
At PROS Outperform 2026 in Lisbon, PROS CEO Sunil John framed this as one of airline retailing’s most important opportunities.
His keynote introduced PROS Kairos, the Offer Platform, and a vision for helping airlines turn customer intent into measurable commercial outcomes. That vision starts with a shift in perspective: understand what the customer needs, shape the offer, and use technology to make it possible.
Customer first. Offer second. Technology follows.
For decades, airline retailing has been shaped by the systems behind it.
Fare classes became the vocabulary of airline commerce. Seats, bags, and lounge access became separate transactions and workflows. New products could require extensive engineering to fit within existing structures.
Those systems supported the industry’s growth. But their constraints still influence what airlines can sell and how customers buy it.
As Sunil put it: “The customer sees one trip, the technology sees three different things.”
Travelers approach a purchase with different questions. Where am I going? What matters to me on this trip? What would make the experience better? What am I willing to pay?
Starting with those questions changes the commercial conversation. It directs attention toward the traveler’s intent, the purpose of the journey, and the value an airline can provide at a particular moment.
The technology’s role is to help the airline express that value through a relevant, purchasable offer.
Every offer is a promise
Getting the offer right has implications beyond the immediate transaction.
“Every offer you make is a promise,” Sunil said.
The passenger buys an expectation of an experience. The airline commits to delivering it. When the experience matches that promise, the customer has a reason to choose the airline again.
Repeated over time, those experiences can build preference, retention, and loyalty. A missed promise can work in the opposite direction.
That makes offer creation part of an airline’s relationship strategy. Product, price, presentation, and delivery all contribute to how a traveler experiences the brand—and whether the next offer earns their attention.
The opportunity extends throughout the journey: planning, booking, arriving at the airport, traveling, and considering the next trip. Each stage creates a different context in which an airline can meet a need and strengthen the relationship.
Earn value while you transform
For many airlines, the question is where to begin.
Order transformation addresses essential operational complexity. Offer transformation creates opportunities to improve what airlines sell and how they sell it. Both deserve attention, and both involve dependencies that require careful planning.
Sunil challenged the assumption that one must be completed before the other begins.
Order transformation can take years. Markets, competition, and customer expectations move much faster. Waiting for an entire technology transition to finish can leave commercial opportunities uncaptured along the way.
PROS’ recommendation is to pursue progress in parallel: modernize offers on top of existing systems while evolving the order environment on the airline’s timeline.
Better offers can generate revenue, conversion, customer insight, and preference during that transition. Some of that value can help fund further modernization. Learning from live offers can also inform the requirements of the evolving order architecture.
“The question isn’t whether you transform,” Sunil said. “The question is do you earn while you’re doing it?”
This approach gives transformation a continuing commercial purpose: improve what customers can buy and what the airline can deliver throughout the journey.
PROS Kairos: intelligence to know, freedom to act
Kairos takes its name from the precise, decisive moment when action matters.
The platform is designed to help airlines recognize those moments and turn commercial strategy into relevant offers through four connected activities:
- Define: Establish what can be sold, under which rules, and in what quantities.
- Optimize: Determine the offer’s value for the passenger and the airline.
- Construct: Combine flights, seats, and ancillary products into a sellable offer.
- Market: Put that offer in front of the passenger at the right moment.
These activities inform one another. Marketing response feeds optimization. Optimization informs offer construction. What customers buy helps shape what the airline defines and markets next.
Kairos brings two layers of AI to this work. One continuously optimizes offers in the background. The other puts intelligence directly into users’ hands, helping them surface information, understand recommendations, and take action within their workflow.
Sunil also made an important distinction: existing capabilities provide the foundation, while parts of the complete platform vision remain ahead. Customers should understand both what is available today and what PROS is building toward.
Commercial independence requires openness
PROS’ focus within that ecosystem is deliberate: the offer layer.
The order system records, services, changes, and refunds the purchase. Offer and order need to work together, and PROS intends to support that relationship through partnerships rather than build every component itself.
For customers, the principle is choice. Airlines should be able to select capabilities and partners that fit their strategy and evolve their technology environment on their own terms.
That openness also applies to data.
“Our principle is simple: data should never become anyone’s leverage,” Sunil said.
He described a commitment to data that is accessible, portable, and usable beyond PROS systems. That foundation matters increasingly as airlines develop their own analytics and AI capabilities.
Sunil highlighted Databricks as PROS’ first unified data layer partner, supporting a governed approach to combining airline, market, third-party, and operational data through open sharing standards. The goal is to build shared intelligence that can be reused across the ecosystem.
AI that keeps the airline in control
As agents take a greater role in operating software, Sunil identified two commitments: explainability and human control.
Users need to be able to question recommendations and understand the reasoning behind them. They also need to decide how much autonomy is appropriate for different decisions.
That principle connects the platform’s intelligence to its broader purpose. AI should help airline teams apply their expertise, evaluate options, and act with greater confidence while retaining accountability for their business.
A renewed focus on airlines
Sunil positioned Kairos within PROS’ renewed, exclusive focus on serving airlines—bringing together more than four decades of airline experience, lessons from other industries, and continued investment in AI.
The ambition is to help airlines make better commercial decisions now while gaining greater control over how they compete in the future.
Each better offer creates an opportunity to learn. Each promise kept can strengthen a relationship. Each open connection can make the ecosystem more useful.
Those gains build over time, with the airline directing the strategy.
Explore PROS Kairos, the Offer Platform built for airline commercial independence.