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T2RL's The Market for Airline Delivery Systems 2026 splits the DCS vendor market into two categories: departure control systems bundled into a full passenger services system, and standalone DCS sold apart from any reservations platform.
Standalone Departure Control Systems
In the report's standalone DCS category, Ink ranks number one with 32 airlines, connected to 10 different reservations systems. Res2 ranks second with 31 airlines and 14 systems. Amadeus ranks third with 8 airlines and 4 systems. IBS Software, Collins Aerospace, Hitit and Sabre each serve one airline in this table. IBS Software, Collins Aerospace, Hitit and Sabre all trail well behind on this measure.
Only 68 of the world's 1,159 passenger airlines run a DCS supplied by someone other than their reservations vendor. T2RL points to functionality as the driver, stating that Ink has more advanced functionality than the simple check-in systems built into PSS platforms aimed at the low-cost market.
Why the wider market looks different
Total passenger volume across all DCS provision is dominated by the largest PSS vendors, Amadeus, Amadeus Navitaire, TravelSky and Sabre among them, because that figure measures systems that come bundled with a reservations platform by default rather than by choice. T2RL is explicit about this pattern: "The vast majority of airlines use the DCS provided as part of their Passenger Services System (PSS)," and it expects that to hold in the near term. It adds that legacy DCS is "locked into a decades-old paradigm of how an airline functions." This reflects how many airlines haven't separated the two systems.
Built for Offers and Orders
T2RL ties Ink's standalone position to the industry's move toward Offer Order Settle Deliver, which it expects will produce a market "more modular than the legacy PSS," with delivery systems interfacing separately from reservations rather than sitting inside one bundled stack.
The report describes Ink as having "embraced the development of OOSD and the evolution of DCS into modern delivery systems," and notes that it "has provided delivery capabilities to Riyadh Air alongside the OrMS provided by FLYR." It goes on to call Ink "a leading proponent of the importance of delivery systems," particularly the idea that the delivery system should become involved as soon as an Order is created.
A rare vertical setup among DCS vendors
The report also flags Ink as unusual among software providers for running its own airport hardware business, supplying kiosks, bag drop and biometric boarding gates alongside its delivery software. That combination lets Ink offer software optimised for its own hardware while still supporting standards-compliant devices from other vendors.
On the architecture side, T2RL credits Ink as a leading voice for the view that the delivery system should engage with an Order the moment it's created, rather than waiting until closer to departure. In that model, the delivery system becomes the natural point for managing post-booking ancillary sales and tracking.
Source: The Market for Airline Delivery Systems 2026, T2RL, July 2026
