Etihad
Etihad is a custom-built flight booking engine serving travelers with a streamlined reservation flow across 25+ payment methods and multiple GDS integrations. The platform handles search, fare selection, ancillaries, payment and ticketing in one coherent journey.
What is Etihad?
Etihad is a custom-built flight booking engine serving travelers with a streamlined reservation flow across 25+ payment methods and multiple GDS integrations. The platform handles search, fare selection, ancillaries, payment and ticketing in one coherent journey.
Moxace engineered the booking engine on a custom build base, reusing 17 of 21 modules unchanged and developing 4 bespoke blocks for multi-GDS fare normalization and regional payment orchestration. Compliance and performance were treated as first-class requirements from the first sprint.
The re-architecture delivered a 72% faster booking flow with zero downtime incidents during migration, built to absorb peak travel-season loads while keeping every transaction payment-grade secure.
Key Features
The capabilities that make Etihad stand out in the travel space.
Unified booking flow
Single-page booking experience consolidating search, selection, passenger details, ancillaries and payment into a streamlined 4-step process with progressive disclosure.
Multi-gds integration
Simultaneous fare shopping across Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport with normalized results, real-time availability and best-fare ranking across all sources.
25+ payment method support
Regional payment orchestration supporting credit/debit cards, local wallets (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Mada, STC Pay), corporate accounts and milestone billing.
Ancillary revenue engine
Dynamic upsell of seats, baggage, meals, lounge access and travel insurance at contextually optimal points in the booking funnel.
Real-time seat map
Interactive cabin visualization with live seat availability, premium seat highlighting, adjacency detection and family-group seating logic.
Order management & changes
Self-service flight changes, cancellations and refunds with rule-based eligibility checks, fare difference calculation and instant e-ticket reissuance.
Loyalty & frequent flyer integration
Seamless miles earning/redemption at booking, tier-based benefits display, and partner airline mileage accrual.
Fraud detection & risk scoring
ML-based transaction scoring that flags anomalous booking patterns, velocity checks and device fingerprinting without adding friction to legitimate travelers.
Services Provided
The end-to-end engineering and design work behind Etihad.
Booking platform Re-architecture
Replaced a legacy monolithic booking engine with a modular microservices architecture supporting independent scaling of search, pricing, payment and ticketing.
- Event-driven order state machine
- Saga pattern for multi-step transactions
- Feature-flagged gradual rollout
GDS & NDC connectivity
Built and maintained integrations with 3 major GDS platforms plus direct NDC connections to 12 airlines for negotiated fares.
- Fare normalization layer
- Real-time inventory polling
- NDC offer/booking APIs
Payment orchestration
Centralized payment gateway abstraction supporting 25+ methods with intelligent routing, 3DS2 challenge flows and automatic retry logic.
- PCI-DSS compliant engineering
- Tokenized card storage
- Multi-currency settlement
Performance & reliability engineering
Achieved 72% faster page loads and 99.99% availability through CDN optimization, database read-replicas and circuit-breaker patterns.
- Sub-2s TTFB globally
- Graceful GDS timeout handling
- Chaos-engineered failover tests
Tech Stack
Technologies powering Etihad in production.
Java + spring boot
Enterprise-grade backend services for booking orchestration, GDS connectivity and payment processing.
React + next.js
SSR booking frontend with optimistic UI updates, skeleton loading states and i18n for 12 languages.
Apache kafka
Async event processing for ticketing, notifications, loyalty points and downstream system updates.
Oracle + redis
Oracle for transactional booking data (legacy compatibility), Redis for session state and fare caching.
AWS + Azure hybrid
Dual-cloud deployment for disaster recovery with active-passive failover tested quarterly.
Stripe + adyen
Dual payment processor setup for geographic coverage and redundancy across 25+ payment methods.
Results & Impact
"They solved a complex, large-scale booking challenge with precision. Execution was structured and the outcome exceeded expectations."
Why This Matters
Modern digital booking experiences are no longer optional for travel operators. They are essential tools for direct bookings, ancillary revenue, and customer loyalty.
Moxace's partnership with Etihad enabled:
- Reliable booking experiences across 25+ payment methods
- Seamless integration across GDS platforms, NDC connections, and ticketing systems
- Continuous platform improvements without downtime
- Scalable infrastructure for peak travel season loads
- Strong security and payment-grade data protection
Conclusion
From booking flow re-architecture to dual-cloud reliability engineering, Etihad's flight booking engine demonstrates how enterprise-grade travel technology can power faster, more reliable reservations at scale.
Moxace helped Etihad deliver a stable, scalable, and high-performance booking platform ready to support future route expansion, new payment methods, and evolving traveler expectations.
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