Will my customer get the airline reference number so they can check in on the airline website themselves?

Yes, in most cases they will. When a ticket is issued through our flight booking API, the airline booking reference, the one many agents call the PNR, comes back along with the ticket number, and you can print both on the ticket or itinerary you send your customer.

With that reference and the passenger surname, your customer can usually go to the airline website or app, check in online, pick a seat if they did not already do so, and see any schedule updates. That is the normal situation with the full service airlines. It is less certain with some low cost carriers, because a few of them hold the booking under the agency account and do not let a passenger open it on their own. In those cases check in may have to be done by you or at the airport counter, and that depends on the airline rather than on anything we decide.

One thing worth knowing is that some suppliers also return their own reference, which is not the same as the airline one. Give your customer the airline reference, and keep the supplier reference for when you need to raise a change or a refund. Also remember that if your customer uses that reference to add a bag or change a seat directly with the airline, your booking record on our side will not always pick that up, so ask them to tell you when they do.

Before you go live, make a test booking on each of the main airlines you plan to sell and look at what comes back, so you know which ones your customers can manage by themselves.