Star Alliance has launched a new Digital Services Platform to simplify data sharing among member airlines when passengers travel on itineraries involving multiple carriers.
The platform is designed to let travelers use any member airline’s website or mobile app to access comprehensive information for journeys that include flights operated by several Star Alliance carriers.
United Airlines is the first carrier to adopt this capability. As of Feb. 2, United customers can select seats on partner-operated flights when booking through united.com or the United mobile app. The Digital Services Platform also enables baggage tracking across multiple airlines, improving visibility for passengers and staff throughout interline journeys.
“Most frequent travellers have a ‘home airline’ in our network and would prefer to control their entire travel experience through a single app or website,” said Jeffrey Goh, CEO of Star Alliance. “We are therefore working to create central capabilities that can be shared for use by our individual members.”
The initiative aims to reduce common pain points in multi-carrier travel, such as fragmented booking information, inconsistent seat selection options and limited baggage status updates. By centralizing certain services, Star Alliance intends to provide a more seamless, consistent experience across member airlines while allowing each carrier to maintain its own branding and customer relationship.
For customers, the benefits include consolidated access to seat maps, the ability to choose seats on partner flights without visiting a different carrier’s website, and clearer baggage tracking when itineraries span multiple airlines. For airlines, the shared platform reduces the need for bespoke integrations between every pair of partners, streamlining technical collaboration and improving operational efficiency.
Star Alliance describes the Digital Services Platform as a foundation for future capabilities that members can adopt at their own pace. As more airlines integrate with the platform, travelers should see broader coverage of seat selection and baggage tracking across the network, along with potential expansion into additional shared services such as real-time flight status, disruption management and ancillary purchases.
United’s early rollout demonstrates how the platform can be implemented in a live environment and signals the alliance’s commitment to incremental improvements that benefit both passengers and member carriers. As adoption grows, the platform could help reduce the friction that often accompanies itineraries involving multiple airlines and provide a more unified travel experience for millions of passengers who routinely mix carriers within the Star Alliance network.