Can I hold a flight seat for my customer while they decide whether to pay?

Sometimes yes, but this is decided by the airline rather than by us or by your portal. Many full service airlines allow a flight to be booked and held without payment until a deadline that they set themselves, which is usually called a ticketing time limit. When a hold is available, the flight API returns that deadline along with the booking, and your staff can see it in the booking screen and issue the ticket later from the same place.

Whether a hold is offered at all depends on the airline, the fare you have selected, the route and how close the departure date is. Low cost carriers almost always want payment straight away, and the cheapest promotional fares on other airlines often cannot be held either. Bookings made very close to departure are usually instant purchase as well. Because the hold is the airline's offer and not something we can create, the honest answer is that some searches will give your customer a deadline and others will not.

It is also worth knowing what happens if the deadline passes. The airline cancels the held booking on its own, and when you search again the fare may no longer be there at the same amount, so a hold buys your customer thinking time but does not lock the price beyond the deadline. Depending on your plan, reminders can be sent to your team before a held booking expires so nothing slips through.

The next thing to check is which of the airlines and suppliers connected to your portal actually return a ticketing time limit, so ask us to confirm that for the routes you sell most and test it with a few sample bookings before you promise holds to your customers.