After pricing a flight offer, initiate a hold (option) booking through your GDS or NDC API by submitting the PNR creation command with passenger name records and contact details without immediate payment.
Retrieve the ticketing time limit (TTL) from the PNR remarks or the option expiry field in the NDC order response; store this as the hard deadline for payment and ticketing.
Set an internal reminder/job to alert your operations team or trigger automated payment collection at a defined buffer before the TTL (e.g., 4 hours before expiry).
If payment is confirmed, call the ticketing command or the order payment endpoint to convert the hold to a confirmed, ticketed booking before TTL expiry.
If the traveler does not proceed, explicitly cancel the PNR hold before expiry to release the inventory and avoid potential debit memos from the airline.
Log all TTL events (hold placed, reminder triggered, ticketed or cancelled) with timestamps for audit and reconciliation purposes.
Known gotchas
TTL is set by the airline and is not negotiable — it can be as short as a few hours for last-minute fares or during high-demand periods; never assume a 24-hour default.
Failing to cancel an expired hold does not guarantee automatic release; some GDS systems may still generate a debit memo for the ticketing agent — always explicitly cancel.
Prices are not guaranteed at hold time for all fare types; re-price the PNR just before ticketing to detect any fare changes that occurred during the hold period.
Give your agent this knowledge — and 200+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp