Onboard retail where every flight is reconciled overnight and every sell-out becomes the next load
Every flight's sales reconciled, and every sell-out turned into the next load.
See one case, screen by screen ↓Onboard retail management is running an airline's buy-on-board and inflight duty-free as a business: the range, what is loaded on each flight, crew sales, pre-orders, stock and the revenue reconciled per flight. Onboard Retail Management is inflight retail software that does it with seven AI agents that reconcile every flight's crew sales against the load, the card settlement and the counted cash, explain each variance, and turn sell-outs into the next load. The onboard retail manager approves every change and signs variances over the threshold.
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Onboard retail turns every flight into a small shop that opens for two hours: buy-on-board food and drink packed at the caterer the day before, a crew sales device (the crew EPOS) that is offline most of the flight, cash and cards, pre-orders packed by seat and, on long haul, a bonded duty-free cart. After landing, the back office has to make the device, the stock and the money agree. The nightly job prints a variance list, and on a day of more than a thousand flights it carries dozens of them, each one a person reading a device log days later.
Most of those variances are ordinary: a void that synced late, an offline card that declined at sync, a crushed sandwich. Unexplained cash goes to the crew as a question, and crews resent it. Meanwhile the ancillary revenue the airline is counting on leaks away: the sales report shows 24 of 24 snack boxes sold, a perfect flight, and says nothing about the passengers in rows 20 to 30 who asked after the box was gone, so the next flight loads the same. Early-morning flights keep loading sandwiches nobody buys at 6 am, and pre-order offers get sold that the caterer cannot fill.
Estimated split for one day of a 1,090-flight onboard retail operation, by hand and with the solution.
Seven agents reconcile every flight, explain every variance, turn sell-outs into the next load and check each other; the retail manager approves and signs.
Corvane Airways flies about 1,090 flights a day with buy-on-board, and duty-free on long haul. It is Thursday, October 15. Lena Marsh, the Onboard Retail Manager, starts with what needs her. Here is what happens next, screen by screen, in the working solution.
Today opens on three numbers: $612,480 of onboard sales yesterday, $3.40 per passenger across 1,091 flights; 1,084 flights reconciled overnight, 1,027 balanced and 53 explained by the agents; and 12 decisions waiting. Overnight, between 2:00 and 8:05 am, the agents read 5,410 sell-outs and 2,207 "asked, not available" taps, drafted three loading changes, held one duty-free cart and caught a pre-order the caterer cannot fill.
“Needs you: 12 — decisions the agents will not make alone.”
CV 1290 leaves at 2:10 pm on A321neo N845CV, 188 of 196 booked, with 23 pre-orders worth $235. The flight is a cabin, not a row in a table: pre-orders sit on their seats, last flight's sales show faintly behind them, and two carts work the cabin, one from row 10 and one from row 39. Above rows 20 to 30 a band reads that the snack box sold out there on 5 of 5 flights; beneath the map, crew asks after the sell-out run 9, 12, 10, 14 and 13 a flight, Oct 10 to Oct 14.
The loading planner proposes the Coastal snack box at 36 instead of 24 from Friday, October 16: 18 per cart, a full retail drawer, +5.4 kg, no spoilage risk, an estimated +$116 a flight. Its working lists the plan step by step and the five sources it read: the sell-out log for five flights, today's booked load, the pre-order manifest, cart standard RC-2 and product spec SB-01. The variance checker re-derived the demand on its own and agrees; confidence 0.91.
“Re-derived from the sell-out log alone, without the planner's working: 11.6 unmet asks a flight; 36 covers 9 of 10 flights.”
Lena asks the agents why rows 20 to 30. The answer: the two carts meet around those rows, so they are served last by both, and the box ran out at rows 18–20 forward and 30–32 aft. She tries 30 boxes. The agents re-plan as she types: 15 per cart, about 5.6 asks a flight still unmet, an estimated +$60 a flight, +2.7 kg.
She keeps 36 and approves with the reason code "Demand above load", ticking "Also top up today's flight from the Miami store (+12, until 12:40 pm)". Packing order PK-77231 and top-up PK-77232 go to the Miami store, into Hannah Kowalski's queue. The planner says it will report sales against the new load after five flights.
The loading planner never sends anything to a store before a person approves it.
Under the seat map sits yesterday's reconciliation for CV 1290: N838CV, device CD-4471, $1,486 of sales, $1,382 by card and $104 in cash, a cash variance of −$64, explained. Clicking seat 14C shows why: last flight it bought four wines and three cheese and crackers, $64, paid by card.
“This seat first paid $64 cash, then changed to card. The crew voided the cash sale (V-0412) and re-rang it by card. The void synced at 7:58 am, after the nightly run.”
REC-60214 lays out the money and the stock. At the 2:00 am run the device showed $168 cash; lead flight attendant Jess Arno declared, and the cash office counted, $104. The void arrived at 7:58 am, so expected cash is now $104. Stock balances on all 11 items — 284 loaded, 189 sold, 94 returned, one crushed sandwich logged with a photo. The checker re-derived it from the raw device log, the settlement and the envelope and agrees; confidence 0.97.
“Jess Arno confirmed the cart counts on the device at 4:52 pm CT. No question for the crew.”
Cash handling policy CH-7 asks for the retail manager's sign-off on any cash variance over $50, explained or not. Lena ticks "I have read the explanation and the sources" and signs with "Explained: void synced late". The evidence pack for the flight holds the device log, the load manifest and return count, the card settlement, the cash office count, the agents' explanations and the checker's result, the decisions with reason codes and the CH-7 extract, each with a fingerprint.
Not every variance has an answer. On CV 2405 Miami to San Juan the device shows beer loaded 36, sold 22, returned 8, with no void, no damage photo and no crew count at landing; confidence 0.62. The agent says so and goes no further. Only the base manager contacts crew: Carla opens a drafted message to lead flight attendant Rosa Quintero, neutral and factual, and nothing is sent until she presses Send.
“I cannot explain the 6 from the records, so I am not guessing.”
CV 64 Miami to London leaves at 9:40 pm with duty-free cart DF-118. The seal on the manifest reads 4471802; the seal scanned at loading reads 4471820. It looks like two transposed digits, but a bonded cart only leaves on a matching seal, so the agent held it and asked the bonded store to confirm before loading at 6:40 pm. On the inbound CV 65, all 14 liquids bags are sealed with the receipt inside, and the crew card shows the allowance for returning US residents: $800 and 1 liter of alcohol.
The same day of onboard retail, seen by five of the people who run it — what the back office looked like, and what it looks like now.
Seven agents reconcile every flight, explain every variance, turn sell-outs into the next load and check each other; the retail manager approves and signs.
Reconciles every flight overnight: device sales against the load and returns, the card settlement and the counted cash, and traces every variance to the device events with citations.
Re-derives each reconciliation and each loading proposal from the raw records, without reading the other agents' working, and agrees or disagrees in writing.
Proposes the load per flight and cart from bookings, pre-orders, where items sold out and how many passengers asked after, inside drawer capacity, weight and shelf life. Adjusts to bookings by rule within ±10%.
Proposes range changes by route group — add, swap or drop — from sales per flight, sell-outs, write-offs and margin, with the evidence.
Drafts pre-order offers for specific flights capped to what the load can carry, tracks fulfilment, and drafts substitutes or refunds when a caterer cannot supply.
Watches stock and shelf life at each store, moves expiring stock onto flights that sell it, and prepares write-offs for a person.
Checks bonded cart seals at loading and return, the allowances on crew cards, and sealed bags with receipts on US-bound flights.
The retail manager approves loads and signs variances over $50; only the base manager contacts crew. The agents propose; a named person decides.
Ask about any flight, item, cash variance or number, or tell the agents what to change. Every answer cites its sources, and nothing changes until a person approves it.
Why 12 more snack boxes on Miami–Chicago?
On the last five CV 1290 flights the snack box ran out before rows 20–30, where the two carts meet, and crew logged 58 passengers who asked after it was gone. 36 boxes is 18 per cart, exactly one retail drawer, +5.4 kg, no spoilage risk. Estimated +$116 a flight.
Explain the $64 cash variance on CV 1290
Seat 14C paid $64 cash, then switched to card; the crew voided the cash sale and re-rang it. The void synced at 7:58 am, after the 2:00 am run, so the run expected $168 cash instead of $104. The envelope counted $104. It is over $50, so it needs your signature.
Which routes waste the most fresh food?
This week: the 6:05 am Miami–Boston, 47 turkey sandwiches written off of 80, then Caribbean hummus, 41% written off. Industry-wide, 23% of cabin waste is untouched food and drink.
Draft a pre-order offer for next week's Miami–Chicago flights
Drafted already as PO-OFF-31: the snack box on CV 1290 and CV 1291, Oct 16–22, capped at 12 a flight and reserved from each departure store, so it cannot oversell the carts. Nothing goes to passengers until you approve the words.
13 screens from the working solution, on its sample data. Pick one to see it large.
How the agents work at your airline: who can decide what, the thresholds, the rules they follow and the systems they read. Only the administrator or the retail manager changes a threshold, and every change is logged.
| Setting | Default | Choose from |
|---|---|---|
| Cash variance needing the retail manager's sign-off | $50 | Any dollar amount, from policy CH-7 |
| Bulk-accept limit for explained variances | $50 | Any dollar amount |
| Stock variance tolerance | 2 units per item | Any number of units |
| Load change needing a person | 50% of standard | Any percentage; changes inside ±10% are applied by rule from bookings |
| Pre-order cut-off | 24 hours before departure | Any number of hours |
| Top-up deadline | 90 minutes before departure | Any number of minutes |
| Fairness threshold before a base manager sees a pattern | 3 unexplained variances in 30 days | Any number |
| 14 CFR 121.575 alcoholic beverages | On | Load changes never change service limits |
Every figure is labelled: a target the solution is built to, an estimate, a typical published result, or a proven one.
“demo” = seen in the working solution, on its sample data · “target” = the design goal, measured in the pilot · “estimated” = our estimate (the hours split) · “typical” = published figures (Moodie Davitt Report — only about 7.5% of passengers buy onboard; IATA cabin waste — 23% of cabin waste is untouched food and drink). Rules named for context: 14 CFR 121.575, the TSA duty-free liquids rule and the CBP personal exemption. Corvane Airways, its flights and the people named on this page are fictional — characters and sample data in the working solution.
Onboard retail management is running an airline's buy-on-board and inflight duty-free as a business: the range, what is loaded on each flight, crew sales, pre-orders, stock and the revenue reconciled per flight. Onboard Retail Management is inflight retail software that does it with seven AI agents that reconcile every flight's crew sales against the load, the card settlement and the counted cash, explain each variance, and turn sell-outs into the next load. The onboard retail manager approves every change and signs variances over the threshold.
Each flight's crew sales device is matched against the load minus returns, the card settlement and the cash envelope. In the working solution the reconciliation agent does this overnight for every flight and traces each difference to device events — a void that synced late, an offline card that declined, a paper sale during a device restart — and the variance checker re-derives it on its own. Only what the agents cannot settle reaches a person.
The loading planner reads where each item sold out on the seat map, how many passengers crew logged as asking after it was gone, bookings, pre-orders, drawer capacity, weight and shelf life. Small changes inside ±10% are applied by rule from bookings; anything else is a proposal with one reason and its sources, approved by the retail manager before a packing order goes to the store.
By loading less of what goes unsold and moving stock before it expires. In Onboard Retail Management the stock and spoilage agent moves expiring stock onto flights that sell it, the loading planner proposes smaller fresh loads where write-offs are high — 16 to 8 turkey sandwiches on a 6:05 am flight that wrote off 47 of 80 over five flights — and the assortment agent proposes range swaps such as a breakfast wrap before 8 am. The target is 25% fewer fresh-food write-offs on pilot routes.
The pre-order agent drafts offers for specific flights capped to what the load can carry, reserved from the departure store rather than cart stock. It also catches orders a caterer cannot fill before departure and drafts a substitute or a refund. Nothing reaches a passenger until a person approves the words, and offers use nothing about a passenger except the flight and cabin booked.
The duty-free agent checks bonded cart seals at loading and return and holds any cart whose seal does not match its manifest. On US-bound flights, liquids are sold in a sealed tamper-evident bag with the receipt inside, following the TSA rule, and the crew card shows the CBP allowance for returning US residents, $800 and 1 liter of alcohol. It quotes allowances only as published.
People decide everything that matters: the retail manager approves loads, range and offers and signs cash variances over $50; the supply planner handles top-ups, stock moves and write-offs. The agents never contact crew. Only the base manager does, with the evidence and a neutral drafted message, and patterns reach her only above the fairness threshold.
The Agentic Solution Engine builds and deploys it from your requirements and documents — your cash handling policy, cart standards, product specs and the systems behind each flight — and it goes live once every quality gate has passed. A first-time setup checklist links the crew devices, payment processor, reservations, caterers and stores, the general ledger and roles.
Every caterer line checked against what was loaded, and every missed penalty claimed.
1-min demoGalley PlanningEvery galley loaded to spec: no cabin short of a meal, no weight flown for nothing.
1-min demoCatering Demand ForecastingMeals ordered for the passengers who board, not the ones booked, and no cabin left short.
1-min demoWe'll run Onboard Retail Management on a day of your own crew device logs, loads, settlements and cash counts.