Six Characters

What the PNR locator on your boarding pass actually contains, and why the fare calculation line on your e-ticket is written in a currency that does not exist.

Six Characters

Part 2 of 6 in the Iron Core series: the 60-year-old infrastructure that flies 4.5 billion people a year.

My Air India e-ticket has a line on it that looks like a typographical error:

NAG AI X/DEL AI LON Q DELLON14.00Q DELLON21.00 228.08 NUC263.08END ROE88.687919

It is not a typographical error. It is a fare calculation: expressed in a notation system designed in the 1970s, referencing a currency that does not exist (NUC), and priced to a city code (LON) rather than an airport. Every field in that string is meaningful. By the end of this piece, you will be able to read it.

But first: the six characters at the top of the ticket.

DDTCIV.

This is my PNR: Passenger Name Record. The booking reference. The confirmation code. The six characters that identify me to Air India, to the airport check-in system, and to the departure gate scanner in London. They appear on every document related to my flight: the e-ticket, the myBiz confirmation, the boarding pass, the baggage tag.

Here is what most people, and many engineers who build systems that interact with aviation, do not know about those six characters.

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