Airline Partnerships & Commercial Analyst
Role Overview
We handle a significant volume of flight bookings monthly across global leisure & corporate travel markets. This role is responsible for maximizing flight profitability by identifying the right supplier for each route/market, negotiating PLB/commissions/TBF with consolidators and airlines, and driving sourcing discipline across the organisation. Success is defined by bottom line improvement through sharper analytics and stronger supplier management.
Key Responsibilities
1. Supplier Strategy & Commercial Negotiation
- Own relationships with all flight suppliers (Direct Airlines, GDS, Consolidators).
- Negotiate PLB, commissions, and TBF improvements market-wise and airline-wise.
- Maintain a structured supplier scorecard: performance, rate competitiveness, reliability.
- Drive outcomessecure better commercial terms, quarterly PLB tiers, and tactical promotions.
2. Route-Level Sourcing Optimization
- Continuously evaluate supplier competitiveness by market/airline/class of service.
- Set up and enforce sourcing logic inside internal booking flows and agent workflows.
- Flag leakages and ensure maximum bookings flow through the most profitable supplier.
3. Data Analytics & Insights
- Analyse monthly booking volumes, fares, commissions, market trends and supplier margins.
- Identify patterns: markets with high leakage, underperforming suppliers, missed PLB tiers.
- Generate insights to guide commercial discussions and business decisions.
- Maintain dashboards for route profitability, supplier performance and GM% movement.
4. Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work closely with Product/Tech to integrate sourcing rules into the booking engine.
- Align with Finance for PLB tracking, reconciliation and forecasting.
What Success Looks Like (First 12 Months)
- Improvement in gross margins via better sourcing & commercial terms.
- Fully mapped and documented supplier-by-market matrix (best source per airline/market).
- Reduced sourcing leakage8090% adherence to recommended sourcing rules.
- Achieved improved PLB tiers with key suppliers through volume planning.
- Data systems in place: dashboards, standard commercial templates, negotiation trackers.
- Strong supplier relationships with measurable increases in PLB/commission share.
Skills & Experience Required
- 2 years of experience post/pre MBA
- Strong analytical skillscomfortable working with flight data, fares, and commission structures.
- Negotiation and relationship-management experience with airlines or consolidators.
- Understanding of PLB, commission structures, GDS/NDC, and OTA supply dynamics.
- Ability to synthesise data into decisions (e.g., best supplier per route).
- High ownership, structured thinking and bias for outcomes.
How to succeed in this role
- Be analytical: Dive deep into data to find margin opportunities others miss.
- Be commercial: Push suppliers hard but fairlydrive win-win outcomes.
- Be structured: Maintain clean documentation, commercial records, and supplier matrices.
- Be proactive: Don't wait for issuesspot margin leakages before they become large.
- Be collaborative: Build trust with Sales, Ops, Finance and Tech to operationalize sourcing rules.
